JOE THOMAS… ‘EMBRACING THE SUCK’
Joe Thomas is my idol.
Not because he was born in 1984, when I was already a grown man; youth is fleeting.
And not because he’s 6’6”, making him more than a foot taller than am I; I’m okay with that.
It’s certainly not that his weight is listed at 312 lbs. which in his line of work suggests strongly that he goes maybe 345 give or take — give, let’s be honest — about twenty pounds on top of that.
Joe Thomas is a big boy. Fine. But he’s a big boy in ways other than his gifted physical presence might overpoweringly suggest.
Joe Thomas plays for the Cleveland Browns.
Joe Thomas has played left tackle for the Cleveland Browns for eleven seasons.
In that period, the Browns’ record is 48–128.
Joe Thomas has been a highly-decorated NFL offensive tackle, selected to the Pro Bowl every season since entering the league.
Joe Thomas played in 167 games and started in 167 games.
Of 6,680 pass blocking attempts, Joe Thomas allowed only 30 sacks in his career.
Joe Thomas did not miss a single play in his career until this season; his 10,363 consecutive snaps played is the longest streak since the NFL began recording snap counts in 1999. (Thomas suffered a torn left triceps muscle against the Tennessee Titans on Oct. 22; IR).
Joe Thomas willingly plays for the Cleveland Browns; he could be elsewhere. And he’s happy about it; always with a big, broad smile accompanied by a chuckle and then laughter.
It’s certainly not about the money; his net worth as of February 2014 was estimated to be around $48 million.
In the two-plus months since his season-ending injury, Thomas has become a podcaster, a coach and a weather aficionado not to mention a tongue-in-cheek prospective NFL owner (Carolina) but more importantly according to Dan Labbe reporting for cleveland.com, a “player who will make an important career decision this offseason that, along with Lebron James’ pending free agency, will keep Cleveland sports fans holding their collective breath.”
And rest assured though his loyalty certainly has never been in question, it hasn’t been easy for Thomas, particularly the last two seasons when the Browns’ win total has been stuck at one.
“What the game does to you physically is hard without the payoff of winning…I reached a point last year where I had like an emotional breakdown in the middle of the season after we lost to the Patriots and it was really difficult,” he conceded.
It has been a decade since Joe Thomas finished a football campaign with a winning record; the Browns were 10–6 in his 2007 rookie year. Since then he has willfully endured the swirling tumult and negative fallout of incessant losing. He has also felt the physical pain of each and every one of those losses.
But he has been the epitome of a company man. He has extolled the virtues of new plans and visions and embraced the promise, enthusiasm and spirit of new coaches.
He learned early in his career that as an offensive lineman — as a football player — his job was to do his job, all the while eliminating distraction.
Focus.
Football at any level is the ultimate team sport. In true Belichickian fashion Thomas is adamant when he says, “You have a job to do no matter what anybody else says. You do your job.”
At the time of his injury and with all that mileage on his odometer, Thomas was playing as well as he ever has. ProFootballFocus.com still grades him as the №2 tackle in the league. The Browns apparently agreed, renegotiating the last two years of his contract and rewarding him with a raise while injured, making him the NFL’s highest-paid offensive lineman.
Apart from the windfall, what impressed Thomas was the act itself.
When GMs and coaches like what you’re doing, cheap talk and hollow compliments take a back seat. If the brass responds in kind? Well then…“When they show you with a raise, with a new contract, that’s how you know that they really mean it and they really appreciate what you do,” Thomas pontificated. “And I think that’s the right way to do your business because you showed everybody in the locker room if you do things the right way, we’ll take care of you because we take care of the people that take care of us,” he added.
As for his future, the selfless team-first attitude deeply ingrained for so long takes over. He will not under any circumstance commandeer the spotlight. “I don’t think it would be fair to the players that are in the locker room and the coaches right now to have me be the center of any attention,” he remarked, “whether I decide, yeah, I’m coming back, or, no, it’s time to retire.”
Spoken like the quintessential team player.
And so nobody but Joe knows.
“MOVE THE DRILL!”
“The train keeps going. I’m not the train, I’m a passenger.”
“When you’re one of the biggest guys on the team, you can think, ‘I’m more train than passenger.’
“They moved the drill. I’m 32, and I’m the one who’s left behind now.”
“You’re not playing…And the streak was over. That really meant something to me. Shocking. I don’t know any other word for it.”
Joe Thomas had never before been felled by injury in his long and storied athletic career. Pretty impressive for a grizzled 32-year-old NFL ironman.
Mentally this demanded that a not insignificant adjustment be made.
Acknowledging that life goes on — football life included — he recognized, “Here I am, confronting my career mortality, and no matter how you prepare yourself, it comes down to this: You’re not that important…As much as your teammates, coaches and friends reach out to tell you they’ll miss you, the show goes on.
They’re playing. I’m not. Over the years, I’ve seen it: It’s the thing players have the toughest time accepting.”
Perhaps an easier pill to swallow for a guy with his ego in check, but a sobering reality just the same.
As for sustaining the injury itself Thomas recalls, “…I was having pain in my elbow. I thought it was tendinitis. I’ve had that a lot. In the first half, I told the guard who plays next to me, Joel Bitonio, ‘Man, my elbow is really hurting me. I don’t feel like I can push people at all.’ But that’s not all that much different than lots of games. Maybe 20 times in my career I’ve played through pain like that, and the only guy you complain to is the guy next to you. He understands.”
In the third quarter on a garden variety weak side run from the shotgun, Thomas tried to block his man and he felt the tendon snap in his elbow. The sensation was intense. “It was a sharp, stabbing pain, like hitting your funny bone, and the pain just won’t go away. I just remember yelling something like, ‘Ahhhhhooooowwwwwwwwwww!’ All of a sudden, those pains early in the game made sense. I could feel the tendon roll up my arm. A really creepy feeling, quite honestly.”
“I’m lucky this thing didn’t snap at 9,998 plays — I really wanted to make it to 10,000…Think how amazing it is in the NFL today to play 10-and-a-half years without being really hurt. That’s pretty lucky.
“I don’t want to go out like this. I want to try to do the Jerome Bettis.”
Joe Thomas is a left tackle. John Hannah was a left guard. There have never been two better offensive linemen in NFL history by most any standard.
Not Anthony Munoz. Not Forrest Gregg. Or Bruce Matthews, the most versatile of them all. Not Mike Webster or Gene Upshaw. Larry Allen or Jonathan Ogden. Walter Jones, Randall McDaniel or Art Shell. Jim Otto. Joe DeLamielleure. Dan Dierdorf. Ron Mix, “The Intellectual Assassin.” Jerry Kramer. Or Jim Ringo.
Not contemporaries Tyron Smith, Jason Peters or Trent Williams. Terron Armstead, Andrew Whitworth, David Bakhtiari…Jack Conklin and Mitchell Schwartz.
Offensive linemen in general and in the NFL in particular are beloved by all of their teammates. Not just the ‘skilled’ players they protect and take care of. By all of their teammates and coaches. Probably the training staff too. Not by all of the fans necessarily; the astute observers get it. They know what to look for.
Those who grab dirt on the offensive side of the ball do all of the grunt work with few accolades and fewer complaints. They know who they are. And so do their opponents.
“I like being around here. I like being in the building and I like working around these guys. We’ve got an outstanding group of offensive linemen, we’ve got a great team and it’s fun being around them. There’s a youthful energy in the building. Being able to go out and impart some of the wisdom I’ve gained over 11 years of playing pro football has been a lot of fun. I think it’s been valuable to some guys.”
“…I think I can honestly say I won’t ever do anything I don’t enjoy and won’t reflect positively on the Cleveland Browns…”
It’s not that Joe Thomas has learned to like losing. Accustomed to it over the years to be sure, he is convinced that better days lie ahead.
The Browns have 12 choices in the 2018 NFL Draft including the first and fourth-overall; four in the first 35; and five in the first two rounds. This represents the best drafting position in the franchise’s history. They have nearly $117 million in salary cap space. They have an assertive and competent new General Manager in John Dorsey who brings a wealth of administrative experience to the table (Chiefs; Packers; Seahawks; 2013 Executive of the Year chosen by the Pro Football Writers of America).
The much-maligned owner Jimmy Haslam has demonstrated renewed commitment.
Thomas is excited. “This team right now is set up for a long run of success starting next year,” he proclaimed. “What we’ve done is we’ve sacrificed two years of pain for a [sic] long-term multiple years of gain starting next year and the following year. Because if you look at our salary cap space, if you look at the number of young guys who’ve played and gotten experience right now on this team and then you look at the number of high draft picks we have next year and the following year, there’s no reason that we can’t be really, really good starting next year and the following year.”
The prevailing wisdom is that the Browns’ future is all about sustainability. Sustainability meant building from the ground up and saying goodbye to veteran players such as Alex Mack, Mitchell Schwartz, Joe Haden and John Greco in favor of stockpiling picks and cultivating young talent. Making astute selections is key.
Although he hasn’t formally stated his intentions, Joe Thomas doesn’t forget what winning tastes like and it certainly sounds like the big boy is still hungry.
His decision aside, Joe Thomas is a big man by any and all measure.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in January 2018.]
Addendum: Joe Thomas announced his retirement in March 2018. He will be eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2023.
