From receiver to cornerback. How Stantley Thomas-Oliver made it to the Panthers
Stantley Thomas-Oliver was seven years old when he first met his future stepfather Frank Oliver. He and his two siblings and his mother were on the way to the fair when she stopped to pick up Frank, who she had been dating for some time.
Frank Oliver got in the front seat. He was nervous.
He awkwardly tried to strike up a conversation with the 7-year-old boy.
“I really couldn’t think of anything to talk to him about, so I started asking him about what kind of cars he likes,” Frank Oliver said, adding that broke the ice.
Azuree Oliver, Thomas-Oliver’s mother, laughs when recalling that story as well. She said her son didn’t even like cars. But that day, Frank Oliver and Stantley Thomas-Oliver formed a bond.
The bond only got stronger when Frank and Azuree got married.
Thomas-Oliver, who is now a rookie cornerback for the Carolina Panthers, views Frank Oliver as his real father. Frank Oliver helped his mother raise three children who were not biologically his own. He introduced Thomas-Oliver to football when he was eight years old.
That introduction and guidance his mother and father provided helped lead him to the NFL. As a seventh-round pick, and a rookie trying to earn a spot on the Panthers’ 53-man roster in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Thomas-Oliver knows he’ll have to take advantage of every opportunity.
“Especially being a rookie, you’ve got a lot to prove,” Thomas-Oliver said. “Being a football player, it’s about competing.”
Coachable
Thomas-Oliver, 22, began playing football when he was 8. His father put him through drills, and he soon started playing flag football.
He was fast and athletic, and it was apparent early on that the young boy had talent. During his first year playing tackle football for Pop Warner, Thomas-Oliver fractured his ankle. He was frustrated and didn’t want to go to practice because he knew he couldn’t play.
But his parents sat him down and told him that nothing comes easy. He was going to have to work for whatever he wanted. And he still had one good leg.
“Everyone plays a role,” Azuree Oliver told her son. “No matter how big or how small. As long as he prays and has faith he’ll be successful.”
So Thomas-Oliver listened, and he put in the work to get back on the field. He ate healthy. He rode the bike every day with one foot.
He was 9.
The next year, when he got back on the field, he was better than before. His coaches put him at multiple positions to utilize his talent.
“And he was coachable, so whatever you wanted him to play, whether it was corner, whether it was defensive end, whether it was tight end, whether it was receiver, whether it was running back, he just did it,” Frank Oliver said. “Anything he could do to help the team, he just did it.”
When Thomas-Oliver got to high school, he primarily played wide receiver. He also played basketball and ran track. Few cornerbacks could keep up with him.
As a senior at Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda, Florida, Thomas-Oliver caught 59 passes for 1,105 yards and eight touchdowns. He didn’t have many offers, until a recruiter for Florida International saw him running routes one day after school with one of his teammates.
The recruiter was impressed and FIU offered him a scholarship. He enrolled in 2016. But his journey wasn’t always easy.
Changing his last name
For all of Stantley’s youth, he had been known as Stantley Thomas. And when his mother got married to Frank Oliver, and changed her last name, it bothered him.
Not that she changed her last name, but that he didn’t have the same last name as his mother. At 10, he told his mother that he wanted to change his last name.
“I want the last name of the person who raised me,” his mother Azuree recalled her son saying. “The name I have is not that person.” At the time, she felt Stantley was too young to make that decision. She said they’d revisit it later.
Before Stantley’s 18th birthday, Azuree asked her son what he wanted for his birthday. He told her he wanted to change his last name.
“The fact that he took in three kids that’s not his, that kind of meant something to me,” Thomas-Oliver said.
So when he turned 18, unbeknownst to Frank Oliver, Stantley and his mother went to the courthouse to fill out the paperwork. The overall process took a few months. There were times when Stantley had to return home from college to fill out paperwork, or go to court to explain why he wanted to change his last name.
When the process was complete, he took his certificate with the name change home to show his father, who was sitting in the living room.
Frank Oliver opened the envelope and read the paper. He grabbed Stantley and hugged him and began to cry. He told him “thank you.” It was the first time Azuree had ever seen her husband cry.
When asked about that moment, Frank Oliver pauses, and tries to collect his words.
“It caught me by surprise,” Frank Oliver said. “I was speechless. I was so struck and — I didn’t have any words.”
“It’s one of the biggest things someone has ever done — one of the biggest acts of love that I’ve ever gotten from someone.”
From wide receiver to corner
Thomas-Oliver’s time at FIU got off to a fast start. As a freshman wide receiver, he was named to the Conference USA All-Freshman team after catching 35 passes for 485 yards and one touchdown.
But after Thomas-Oliver’s freshman season, FIU’s athletic director fired then-football coach Ron Turner and hired Butch Davis.
At the team’s first meeting with Davis, the new coach went over the potential starters. Thomas-Oliver wasn’t one of them. He had actually fallen behind in the depth chart. He was disappointed and upset. After the meeting he called his mother and told her he was ready to transfer.
But Azuree wouldn’t let her son transfer. She and her husband told him that he had to learn from this, and once he learned, he’d get a new job.
As a sophomore, Thomas-Oliver did not play much. He appeared in six games and caught only one pass for four yards. During the team’s bowl appearance that year, Thomas-Oliver knew he likely wouldn’t play.
But as the wide receivers practiced one-on-one, he lined up opposite of his teammates as a cornerback and guarded them. He played well.
Thomas-Oliver said shortly after the warm up, Davis walked up to him and asked him what did he think about playing defense next season. Thomas-Oliver immediately said, ‘yes.’
“I wanted to play,” Thomas-Oliver said.
He made the transition appear seamless.
As a junior, Thomas-Oliver played in all 13 games at cornerback, and started the last 11. He became one of the team’s best defensive backs, notching one interception and a team-high 10 pass deflections.
“He really embraced (playing cornerback),” Bryn Renner, FIU’s cornerbacks coach, said. “He didn’t whine, he didn’t complain. He went over there with the intent that I’m going to be the best cornerback on this team, and it ended up happening.”
He continued his rise as a senior, starting in all 13 games. He finished with 54 tackles, had eight pass deflections, two sacks and an interception in an upset win over Miami on Nov. 22.
Jerod Kruse, FIU’s co-defensive coordinator, said Thomas-Oliver took to coaching well and was eager to learn how he could become a better cornerback.
“He had a strong enough year to earn the opportunity he got,” Kruse said of Thomas-Oliver being drafted.
A chance to be special
Thomas-Oliver, at 6-foot, 190 pounds, is entering training camp in the middle of a pandemic, with fewer chances than normal to prove himself. But the Panthers have holes in its secondary that they hope Thomas-Oliver can fill. He considers himself an underdog, but says he’s going to compete.
He’s already caught the eye of at least one of his coaches.
“He’s big and he can run, so he has that confidence. But he’s also humble enough to try to learn as much as he can about playing the position at a high level,” Panthers’ head coach Matt Rhule said Wednesday. “He, to me, is exactly the kind of player we want to build around. A guy that we can develop. And that he’s going to be good now, but he’s going to have the chance to be really special as we move forward.”
His parents say they know he’ll be special. He’s been training for this moment for most of his life.
“You’re going to get somebody who is going to go and step on that field and compete every single play, every day, every single down until the whistle is blown,” Frank Oliver said. “He’s going to give you everything in him and he’s not going to short change you.”
That’s what Azuree and Frank Oliver taught him.
This story was originally published August 2, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
