In January 1973, J.T. Thomas had $150 left in his pocket and a $900 bet riding on the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was in Palo Alto for the East-West Shrine Game, watching Pittsburgh’s playoff meeting with the Oakland Raiders with roughly 30 other players. Thomas had never bet on a football game before, but that night, he put his name down with the others.

Then Oakland went ahead 7–6 late in the game. The players around Thomas started demanding their money. He tried to slip out of the room, only to find the door blocked. He had barely enough money to cover his share. Then Franco Harris broke free, sending the room into a frenzy and Pittsburgh into the AFC Championship Game. Thomas collected his $900. A few weeks later, he would find out that Pittsburgh had drafted him 24th overall.

Thomas would spend the next nine seasons in Pittsburgh, becoming part of the Steelers’ four-championship run of the 1970s. But when the team won Super Bowl XIII, his name was missing from the field after a serious illness forced him to sit out the entire 1978 season. At the Steelers’ 2026 Hall of Honor ceremony, Art Rooney II finally put the missing piece of that championship run into Thomas’ hands:

“Some of you may not know this, but he missed the 1978 season,” Rooney said at the 2026 Hall of Honor event. “He wound up with a very serious illness and wasn’t able to play. The doctors told him, ‘You can’t play this year.’ And missed the whole season, missed that Super Bowl. Lots of people who have the disease he had never lived much longer, let alone come back and play football again.

“He came back the next year, won another Super Bowl with us, but he’s missing that ring from 1978, and he deserved it. So, JT, Super Bowl 13 ring. Here you go.”

But the reason Thomas was missing from that 1978 team, however, was not a temporary setback. It was a health battle that had already been following him for years.

Thomas had already been announced as part of the Hall of Honor class this year, but the ring presentation was not part of the announcement. Rooney surprised him with it during Friday night’s ceremony, giving him the Super Bowl XIII championship ring he had never received because he was sidelined that season.

Thomas was one of the Steelers’ starting cornerbacks before the illness interrupted his run. He had played in Pittsburgh’s first two Super Bowl victories, IX and X, and was a Pro Bowl selection in 1976. The Steelers’ official records credit him with 125 career games, 89 starts and 20 interceptions, numbers that put more substance behind his place in the franchise’s 1970s defense.

The illness was sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that can affect the lungs and lymph nodes. Contemporary Steelers historical accounts describe Thomas as having dealt with the condition for years before finally sitting out the 1978 season. By then, playing through it had become increasingly difficult.

“It’s gonna be tough,” cornerback Mel Blount said in 1978. “Nobody’s gonna replace J.T. from a mental standpoint. By that I mean not only what he knew about the game, but what he meant to all the players. He’s such a likeable guy.”

“He would have been a starter for four Super Bowls had he not gotten sick that year,” Rooney said. “Just a great contributor and tough player. J.T. wasn’t afraid to hit someone; that’s for sure.”

Sitting out did not mean Thomas stopped preparing. While away from the Steelers in 1978, he later explained that he worked out on his own, running three or four miles in the morning, lifting weights and playing basketball in the afternoon. For six months, he said, he trained twice a day.

That work helped him make it back in 1979. Thomas returned to the Steelers, moved into the safety rotation and eventually started at free safety after Mike Wagner was injured. He finished the regular season with 14 appearances and 13 starts, then played in Super Bowl XIV as Pittsburgh beat the Los Angeles Rams 31–19 for its fourth championship in six seasons.

So while Super Bowl XIII was the championship Thomas missed, Super Bowl XIV became proof that the missed season had not ended his career. He had gone from being told he could not play in 1978 to starting again for a championship team one year later.

Thomas has always had a special place in his heart for the Steelers, a team that he believes gave him a space to grow and become the person he is today.

“It really changed my life,” Thomas said during an interview with the Steelers in December, 2016. “The people that I met at the Steelers organization, it was growing in the sense that we just started winning. More so, the people of Pittsburgh really embraced us, they almost owned us.”

That bond was built during a period when the Steelers were changing far beyond the standings. Thomas, who grew up in Macon, Georgia, became Florida State’s first Black football player and first Black player to graduate from the university in 1969. By the time he arrived in Pittsburgh, he was joining a team whose young core was about to become one of the defining groups of the NFL’s 1970s.

Thomas also had a knack for arriving at the biggest moments without needing the spotlight that followed players such as Mel Blount. His own favorite Steelers memory wasn’t a Super Bowl. It was the 1974 AFC Championship Game against the Oakland Raiders, the win that sent Pittsburgh to its first Super Bowl.

“We were young and underdogs,” he reminisced. “In the closing seconds, I had an interception against Ken Stabler that kind of sealed the game.”

Thomas was in his second NFL season when he made that play. With Oakland trying to rally late, he intercepted Stabler and returned the ball to the Raiders’ 24-yard line. Two plays later, Franco Harris ran 21 yards for the touchdown that put the game away and sent Pittsburgh to Super Bowl IX.

That play should not be confused with Harris’ Immaculate Reception. The famous play came in the 1972 AFC Divisional Playoff against Oakland, before Thomas had even joined the Steelers. His Stabler interception came two years later, in the 1974 AFC Championship Game.

A year later, Thomas produced another postseason turnover against the Raiders. In the 1975 AFC Championship Game, he stripped running back Marv Hubbard, with Jack Lambert recovering the fumble at Oakland’s 25-yard line. Pittsburgh went on to win 16–10 in a game played in freezing conditions, then beat Dallas in Super Bowl X.

Those moments help explain why his absence mattered in 1978. Thomas wasn’t simply another member of a star-studded roster. He had been a starting piece of the secondary, a physical corner who had already delivered in the postseason and earned a Pro Bowl selection. Even after returning from illness, he found another way to contribute, shifting to safety as the Steelers continued their championship run.

His career eventually stretched across eight seasons with Pittsburgh and one more with Denver. He finished with 20 interceptions and was part of all four Steelers Super Bowl championship teams of the 1970s, although he was inactive for Super Bowl XIII because of his illness.

But, Thomas now has the four championship rings associated with Pittsburgh’s four Super Bowl victories of the 1970s — two he helped win before his illness, the one from the season he was forced to miss, and the one he returned to play in the following year.