The first time John Lynch and Solomon Thomas met, they were classmates at Stanford.
Lynch hadn't finished his degree when he left for the NFL in 1993 and decided to go back in 2014 when Thomas was a freshman. The pair were in the same Management Science and Engineering course and actually worked together on a project.
Three years later, Lynch drafted Thomas was the third overall pick as the general manager of the San Francisco 49ers.
"He was on top of all the stuff, coming back as an older person, compared to us young people," Thomas said of Lynch. "He was on top of discipline, very studious and diligent."