Ad Disclosure
Former Texas A&M standout Darren Lewis passed away on Thursday night after a battle with cancer. Lewis, 55, was a star running back at Dallas’ powerhouse Carter High School before becoming an All-American with the Aggies. He would also go on to have a brief career in the NFL with the Chicago Bears.
Lewis, nicknamed Tank, lettered for the Aggies from 1987-90 and was inducted into the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 1998.
He was the Southwest Conference Newcomer of the Year as a freshman in 1987, then became a full-blown star as a sophomore in 1988. Lewis missed 1 game early in the season after picking up an injury in the season-opener, but returned with 168 yards in a game against Barry Sanders and the Oklahoma State Cowboys. He’d go on to rush for at least 100 yards in each of his final 10 games and set the single-season Aggie rushing record (1,692 yards).
That record stood until 2018.
Lewis earned 1988 All-Southwest Conference and SWC Offensive Player of the Year honors as well as All-America accolades. Lewis finished second in the 1988 NCAA rushing title to Heisman winner Barry Sanders who posted 2628 rushing yards.
As a senior, Lewis ran for 1,691 yards and 18 touchdowns to officially break Eric Dickerson’s SWC career rushing record. He was again selected as an All-American and named to the All-SWC team.
He finished his career fifth on the NCAA’s all-time career rushing list, behind Tony Dorsett, Charles White, Herschel Walker, and Archie Griffin.
Lewis was drafted in the sixth round by the Bears in the 1991 NFL Draft. At the scouting combine that year, Lewis recorded a positive drug test, causing his stock to fall. He was released in 1993 after 3 seasons with the team.
After his playing career ended, Lewis had repeated run-ins with law enforcement. He was arrested multiple times from 1998-2006. In 2014, he was sentenced to 27 years in prison in connection to a string of armed robberies.
In prison, Lewis developed a mass that later ruptured and was determined to be metastatic squamous cell carcinoma, according to ESPN. He was eventually moved to a facility in North Carolina for medical care and was released last year as part of a compassionate release program.
Lewis told the Bryan-College Station Eagle last week he was grateful for his sentence — the thing that finally helped him to turn his life around. While in hospice care prior to his passing, Lewis was visited by several former teammates from A&M and the Bears, along with former A&M coaches Jackie Sherill and R.C. Slocum.
“Prison changed me in many ways,” Lewis told the Eagle. “Prison actually saved my life. Prison changed the way I looked at things. Prison changed the way I approach things. Prison gave me the opportunity to sit down and study God’s word so that God could minister to me with his word.
“… I want people to remember me once I’m gone not as ‘Tank’ the greatest running back out of Texas but to remember me as an overcomer because that’s what I did. I overcame. I’m grateful to God for allowing me another chance to rewrite my story. A story of change. A story of survival. A story of love. I’m fighting, but I’m winning. I refuse to let cancer win. I’m truly an overcomer.”
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
