ARLINGTON — Lionel Vital never wanted to be a scout — in fact he actually turned down offers to take scouting jobs. Yet in nearly a three-decade career, Vital has become one of the most respected scouts in the National Football League. Vital’s career is proof that as the old Rolling Stones’ lyric goes, “you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.”

“For me it always seems to be that way,” Vital said. “Things you try not to do you get, and things you try to do you don’t get,” Vital said. “It just took me awhile to figure that out is all.”

Making most of chances

Lionel Vital was born on July 15, 1963, in Loreauville and the young man soon gravitated towards sports — football and baseball. Vital’s favorite, though, was baseball as his favorite player growing up was the all-time hit king Pete Rose. Vital went on to become a baseball and football star at Loreauville High School, where he was inducted into the school’s hall of fame in 2017.

The speedy running back and outfielder who wore No. 20 for the Tigers was on no college’s radar, expect one team — Nicholls State University.

“We had to send tape and beg them to take me,” Vital remembered. “We got an offer and it was a last-minute offer. I think it was the last scholarship offer for that class. I think they missed out on someone else and then called me up and offer. And we took it and embraced it.”

Vital didn’t care that the only chance he had to earn a scholarship came from a team on the Division I-AA level. Playing football for the Colonels meant that there was less of burden on his single mother Hazel, and that is what matters to him.

“I was happy for my mom because she couldn’t afford to pay for that,” Vital said. “I would survive one way or another. I had survival skills. If I wouldn’t had gotten that scholarship I would have gone into the Army or something. I would have done something positive. There are too many ways to make it in life if you want to make it.”

It took Vital a while to make an impact on the football field.

As a freshman, he was used sparingly as a kick returner and then was a backup on sweep jet plays as a sophomore. It wasn’t until his junior season, when starting running back Oscar Smith had to miss the semester due to academics — that Vital showcased what he could do.

As the team’s feature back, Vital ran for a then-school record 776 yards in 1983.

That breakout junior season nearly didn’t happen, if it hadn’t been for his mama putting her foot down.

“Headed into my junior year I had a talk with mom about playing time,” Vital said. “I said, ‘Maybe I can transfer to another place.’ She was having none of it. She said, ‘those people are paying for your education and that’s what you are going there for. I don’t want to hear anything else about you transferring.’”

With the Colonels’ second all-time leading rusher Smith back in the fold for the 1984 season, Vital was back to being the backup. He did help the Colonels go 6-5 that season and win the Gulf Star Conference championship.

For his four-year career, Vital rushed for 1,518 yards and scored nine rushing touchdowns.

Despite not having enormous numbers, the 5-foot-9, 195-pound running back still possessed something NFL teams covet — breakaway speed in pads. 

“I didn’t have a great career at Nicholls State,” said Vital, who was inducted into Nicholls’ Hall of Fame in 2017. “I had some games or good moments but I think the scouts saw the speed and quickness.”

The Washington Redskins selected Vital in the seventh round of the 1985 NFL Draft.

False starts in the pros

Vital couldn’t wait to suit up in the pros and earn a spot on the roster of one of the best teams of the 1980s. Unfortunately for Vital, he had to wait longer than expected to make that happen.

The Redskins rookie tore his hamstring during his first rookie mini-camp and spent the season on injured reserve and a member of the scout team. 

“I got banged up when I got there,” Vital said. “The first mini-camp and I had devastating hamstring pull. If you could have pulled it off the bone I probably did it. I still remember them carting me off the field.”

The following season, while still trying to fully come back from the injury, Vital was cut by the team during training camp.

Vital was quickly picked up by the New York Giants, who needed running back depth as Pro Bowler Joe Morris was holding out.

Morris, though, returned to the team after one week and Vital found himself without a job.

“I could just never get the ball rolling,” Vital said.

Vital, thought, got a call from the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. He was signed to the team’s practice squad and was on the practice team one week, and then next on the active roster, and then back again on the practice squad.

Then out of the blue he got a phone call to play for another professional team — but it wasn’t a team that played with a pigskin.

The front office of the Chicago White Sox had called Vital to come play for the franchise’s Instructional League team in Sarasota, Florida. The ball club had kept dibs on Vital since his high school days and saw a chance to grab him to play left and center field.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, I can’t believe this,’” Vital said.

Vital informed Calgary that he was leaving and hopped on plane to Florida where he would play for a little over a month with the club.

“They wanted to see if I had it and if I did they would bring me to spring training,” Vital said. “So I tore it up big time. I was knocking it out of the park. You would have thought I had played the day before.”

The White Sox were so impressed that they brought Vital with them to spring training and he was working out with the Double A squad. Vital, who opened a grocery store named GM’s Quick Stop on Loreauville Road that offseason, sensed that his manager wasn’t thrilled about having a former football player trying to earn a roster spot, and Vital was admittedly wondering what life would be like as an old rookie in the big leagues.

Then Vital got yet another call, and it was a familiar voice on the other end.

“I get a phone call from (former Redskins Assistant General Manager) Charlie Casserly and he told me that there would possible be a strike and asked if I would be interested in playing. I heard that and I thought to myself ‘Am I going to stay here and deal with the politics of being a football player trying to make it as a baseball player or do I take a chance to go back and play football?’”

Vital chose to return to football.

A key replacement

Whereas Vital was welcomed with open arms by his teammates when he was drafted out of Nicholls, his return to Redskins was not as welcoming. The threat of a players union strike loomed large over the preseason and start of the 1987 season. Then after the second week of games, the strike happened and Vital was one of hundreds of players who crossed the picket line. 

So did it bother Vital to be called a scab or even worse colorful names by his former teammates? Not at all.

“When you are in that situation being called a scab or worse is really the last thing you are thinking about,” Vital said. “In that moment you are thinking about living out your dream and not what other people say. We just wanted to go out there and have fun.”

Not only did the replacement Redskins have fun, they won games.

Washington was 1-1 before the strike but with its replacement players — the Joe Gibbs-coached team went a perfect 3-0, all against NFC East rivals — and Vital was key in all three victories.

Vital rushed for 82 yards and scored one touchdown in a 28-21 win over the St. Louis Cardinals and racked up 128 yards and one score in a 38-12 win over the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants, but the former Loreauville star saved his best for last — ironically against the Dallas Cowboys. 

In front of 60,000-plus fans inside old Texas Stadium, and with millions more watching from home on Monday Night Football, the Redskins scab players lined up against a Cowboys team that had six starters return for that game, including Danny White, Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Randy White and star running back Tony Dorsett.

Yet, once the dust settled, it was Vital who outperformed the Cowboys star, rushing for a game-high 136 yards while Dorsett had 80 yards in Washington’s 13-7 victory. The replacement players carried Gibbs off the field on their shoulders as the Redskins won for the first time in Texas Stadium in three years.

That three-game winning streak helped the Redskins win the NFC East, go 11-4 overall in the regular season and helped the franchise go on to win its second Lombardi Trophy in the decade.

“We had a good team that stuck together. We really worked at it for those three games,” said Vital, who was finally awarded a Super Bowl ring from the franchise earlier this year. “We kind of knew it that it would be our last game. It was a great feeling because we beat a real team.”

The strike may have been over but Vital’s time with the Redskins was not. The team kept him on the roster for the next three weeks but as an inactive player. Vital was essentially an insurance policy in case something happened to the team’s backfield. The Redskins cut Vital to give him a chance to sign on with someone else and he quickly did as the Buffalo Bills picked him up for the final two games of the regular season, but once again he was inactive.

“They were preparing me for next season just in case they didn’t do good in the draft,” Vital said. “Then they drafted Thurman Thomas.”

With the Heisman Trophy winner, and future Pro Football Hall of Famer, in the backfield, Vital entered training camp in 1988 vying for a backup role. Vital got nicked up during camp and was released during the season as an injured player. 

That was the last time Vital worked for an NFL team as a player.

Vital extended his professional career when he went back up north to play in the CFL as a backup for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

“I knew I had to make a move,” Vital said. “I felt that I needed to buckle down in one spot and make it work.”

Vital was never a starter for the Roughriders in his two seasons but he did help them win the 1989 Grey Cup, the team’s first world title in more than two decades.

Unexpected path

The following season, Vital was cut by the Roughriders and his future in professional football seemed to be over at the age of 27 years old.

“I went back to my apartment and I remember thinking to myself that this may be it,” Vital said. “I get a phone call about three days later. ‘Lionel, would you like to be a scout?’ I said, ‘No I don’t want to do that. I want to play.’”

The phone call came from current Atlanta Falcons General Manager Tom Dimitroff, who at that time was a young scouting coordinator for the Roughriders. He thought that Vital would make a great young scout for the new World League of American Football league that would debut in 1991. The phone rang again the following day.

“They called me back the next day,” Vital said. “I said I would think about it. I talked to Tom again and I said that I wanted to play. He told me, ‘Try it for a year and if you don’t like it between now and the next training camp and they will put you back in camp as a player.’”

Vital needed some time to think about it — that was, until he talked to his uncle back home.

“My uncle said ‘You must have rocks in your head,’” Vital remembered. “He said, ‘You have gone farther than most and now you got another opportunity to go even further.’”

So Vital took the job and would spend the next nearly three decades evaluating collegiate talent.

After working in the World League for about six months, he got another phone call and once again turned down another opportunity.

“I was having so much fun in Montreal that when they called me to see if I wanted to become a scout for an NFL team I told them no,” Vital laughed. “I told them that I was having a lot of fun there and that I was willing to wait a year or two to get to the NFL as a scout. I hung up on the guy.”

The next day, a scout with the Cleveland Browns called him.

“’Let me ask you something,’ ” he said, ‘if I offered you a scouting job with the Cleveland Browns would you take it?’ I was like I think I would like to be a scout but maybe a few years down the road. He then asked me again in a more stern manner,” Vital said with a laugh. 

So Vital headed to Cleveland to interview with head coach Bill Belichick. 

“Bill asked me all these questions,” Vital said. “He asked me something about a player and he was a hybrid player. He asked what I would you do with a guy like that. I said ‘I don’t know.’ He then threw me a few softballs and I gave my opinion.

“I remember thinking that if Bill hired me that would be great but I had Montreal in my back pocket. I mean I loved the city and I got to go to Expos games all the time and the food was great. You’ve got to remember, I was 27 at the time and single so I really enjoyed Montreal.”

The Browns called him back three days later and offered him a job.

Vital spent the next nearly three decades building a resume, and more importantly a reputation as a respected scout. After his tenure with the Browns, he followed Ozzie Newsome to the Baltimore Ravens where he scouted a future Hall of Famer Ray Lewis, which he followed by rejoining Belichick when he took over as head coach of the New England Patriots, where Vital worked as a scout for a team that won three Super Bowls. From there, he reunited with Dimitroff with the Atlanta Falcons, where he worked for eight years.

After his time in Atlanta came to an end, Vital thought about traveling the world instead of spending his days on college campuses. Then he got a call from the Dallas Cowboys.

“I asked the guy ‘Why the hell are you hiring me, I don’t even know you,’ ” Vital said. “I mean what the hell. He said, ‘Let me tell you a story, brother, about 25 years ago when I was working in the Arena Football League.’ So he was calling all the teams asking questions about guys on rosters. He said everywhere he called they wouldn’t give him the time of day. Except for one person.

“I didn’t even remember talking to him but apparently we talked for more than a hour,” Vital said. “(He said) ‘I always kept up with your career after that and when you came available I knew I had to hire you.’”

So Vital packed up his bags and headed to Dallas, where he has served as Director of College Scouting since 2016.

“Lionel has brought a championship caliber pedigree through his character as a person and his ability to evaluate players,” Dallas Cowboys Vice President of Player Personnel Will McClay said. “And with four Super Bowl rings behind his name, he has been able to garner respect and a voice in helping us build towards a championship and has the experience to help us get to the next level.”

For Vital, the fact that he is still working in the NFL decades after he last put on a helmet and shoulder pads is something he sometimes still can’t believe himself.

“This has been a ride,” Vital said. 

“I am grateful, appreciative and blessed. I am all those words but I could have never planned this. I am just enjoying the ride.”