When the Eagles announced their undrafted rookie free agent signings last month, Syracuse safety Phillip Thomas was on the list.
It didn’t raise many eyebrows amid the legions of other signings around the league, but there was a twist that made Thomas’ tale a little more interesting. According to a Facebook page attributed to Thomas and messages sent from that page to Les Carpenter of Yahoo! Sports, he was claiming to be heading to the Redskins. Carpenter and others contacted that Thomas, who told them that he had always wanted to be a member of the Redskins because Sean Taylor was his favorite player and that he wanted to finish what Taylor started in Washington.
Carpenter, curious about this discrepancy, went to Eagles camp Friday to figure out what to make of Thomas’ dueling tales. He met Thomas, who didn’t sound like the “Thomas” he had spoken with before, and Thomas spoke to Eagles security about what is a fake Facebook page with narratives that seem to have been built off of things the real Thomas has posted on social media sites.
Carpenter confronted the man who had previously claimed to be Thomas after meeting the real Thomas on Friday. The conversation ended when Carpenter told him that he’d just met Phillip Thomas, who was a member of the Eagles and not the man he had spoken to in the past. The ersatz Thomas hung up.
It’s a strange, interesting story about a very off-putting episode. Thomas’ bank accounts were never jeopardized and there doesn’t appear to be any monetary angle to the curious case of the fake Phillip Thomas, which just makes the whole thing that much more baffling.