WFNY Fantasy Baseball Draft 2018
March 19, 2018How Rooting for the MLB Privileged Class Changes Our Expectations
March 20, 2018Happy Tuesday, WFNY!
Last Wednesday, the Cleveland Browns’ All-Everything offensive tackle Joe Thomas announced he was retiring from the NFL. It’s been almost a week now since the announcement was made and, honestly, it’s still not totally sinking in.
I know a lot has been said about Joe Thomas already on this site, on sports sites across the internet, and in all of our daily conversations with friends, family, and coworkers, but I would be remiss if I didn’t take some time this morning to reflect on my own personal feelings about Joe Thomas.
In 2011, as Joe Thomas was about to enter the last season under contract with the Browns, I was worried. I was terrified that he was going to leave. Why wouldn’t he leave? The Browns were terrible, a never-ending joke where the punchline never seems to arrive. Every time you think we’ve reached the punchline, things get worse, and the joke keeps building. I was sure Joe Thomas was about to leave:
“Thomas is already 26 years old and in the midst of his prime. Does he really want to gamble spending the rest of his prime playing for a franchise that continuously trips all over itself trying, and failing, to win? Perhaps he will lean upon loyalty and do just that, but for their own sake, the Browns should look at this next season as their last shot to prove to Thomas that things really are finally on the right track.
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Everyone in Cleveland should hope and pray that Joe Thomas wants to be a Brown for life. And there’s no question the culture inside the franchise is finally showing signs of improving. The Browns have made some downright shrewd trades, some smart draft picks, and have installed an infrastructure that is beginning to resemble a normal, successful NFL franchise. But will it be enough for Joe Thomas or will it be too little too late?”
Looking back on that, a couple things happened. First, everyone who did hope and pray that Thomas wanted to be a Brown for life had their hopes and prayers answered. Unfortunately, the part about the Browns maybe being on the upswing proved to be mostly wrong. The Holmgren/Heckert/Shurmur trio never produced enough wins to be competitive, and like everyone else in leadership positions during Joe Thomas’ tenure in Cleveland, they were replaced. Shurmur led to Chudzinski. After one year, Chudzinski turned into Pettine. After a brief promising start to the Pettine era, he eventually gave way to Hue Jackson and Sashi Brown, a pairing which yielded one win in two seasons.
Indeed, for everything Joe Thomas gave to this franchise, the 10 consecutive Pro Bowls, the 10,363 consecutive snaps, the Man of the Year nominations, the charities, the media appearances, the one shining beacon of pride in a cloud of perpetual dysfunction, Joe Thomas walked away from the Cleveland Browns after an injury ended his season, a season in which the Browns finished 0-16. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. Joe Thomas deserved so much better.
I never in a million years would have thought my favorite football player of all time would be an offensive lineman.1 I never played offensive line in football, I don’t know anything about technique. When you watch football, you don’t want to notice the offensive line. If you notice the line, it typically means they are giving up pressure on the QB. To be an elite offensive lineman means never having your name called on the TV or radio broadcast. That was Joe Thomas’ role on the team. For a lineman’s name to be called, they typically have to give up a sack or commit a penalty. In his 11-year career, Thomas gave up just 30 sacks and committed 61 penalties. So, of his 10,363 career snaps, his name was potentially called just 91 times, or 0.87% of the time. For 10,272 snaps, Joe Thomas excelled at his job. And he did it on a team never going anywhere. And he did it without complaining. He did it while dealing with agonizing pain and discomfort. And that is why he’s my favorite football player of all time.
In listening to both Joe Thomas podcasts (The First Podcast in NFL History and The ThomaHawk Show), it feels like fans are finally starting to get a better idea of who Thomas is. A lot of that started in recent years as Thomas opened up more in the media, but the truth is, a lot of it goes back even to early in his career when he co-hosted “Outdoors Ohio” on SportsTime Ohio with D’Arcy Egan. The show was about fishing, hunting, and wildlife, topics I am not particularly interested in, but I watched anyway. In watching, I came to better understand who Thomas is. You could tell how at home he was in that setting, both in hunting and in being in front of a camera. I’ll admit, at the time I wondered if Thomas not going to the draft and instead spending the day on a lake fishing with his dad was just a publicity stunt. Hey, I’m an Ohio State alum and as such, I am programmed to be wary of Badgers from Wisconsin. Any doubts I had washed away watching Outdoors Ohio. And over time, I saw Thomas less as a Badger and more as a Brown. Wisconsin will always be part of him, of course, and rightfully so. But now, so too will Cleveland.
I wish it was easier to describe just how much Joe Thomas has meant to me as a sports fan. I wish I could talk about the game-winning play he made in the Super Bowl, or cite all the stats he racked up in his career. But what’s awesome about Joe Thomas is none of that stuff matters. It kills me that the Browns were never successful on the field with him, and I’m sure he wishes the team would have been more stable and more successful in his time. But the stats and accolades? Nah, that’s not important. It feels reductive to keep going back to those 10,363 consecutive snaps, but that’s what’s really important here. That’s the core of who Joe Thomas is.
Game after game, snap after snap, no matter the weather, the outcome, how much pain he was in, how tired of losing he might have been, the dysfunction in the ownership box and in the front office, Joe Thomas did his job. He did his job and he excelled at it, doing it better than anyone else in the NFL. He didn’t do it for glory or for money (although those things are nice, too), but he did it because that’s who he is. As he said on his podcast recently, he really just wanted to be a guy his team could count on. Every day, every game, every snap, he was going to take care of his business and do his job. That was Joe Thomas’ value to this franchise on the field. For everything else that was constantly in flux, Joe Thomas was the one thing we could rely on. Without him, I’m not sure how I would have been able to handle the past decade of Browns football.
And now, that beacon of hope and reliability is gone. For all the things that feel like they’re going well for the Browns this offseason, the franchise has now lost the one thing we could always count on. The LT position on the Browns is never going to be the same. That’s a bummer, but I don’t want this to be a sad time. I’d prefer, instead, to celebrate Joe Thomas’ career, to say thank you to him in any way I can, and to hope that the Browns find a way to keep him involved with the franchise.
As the Cleveland Cavaliers paid tribute to JT last night at The Q, and LeBron James came over and the two Cleveland sports icons embraced, it was hard to keep a dry eye. You realize how blessed we have been as Cleveland fans in this time to see such great athletes represent our teams with so much dignity and to give us so much pride.
CLEVELAND LEGENDS. @KingJames showing some love to @joethomas73. #ThankYou73 pic.twitter.com/EExdYPs8Ju
— Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) March 19, 2018
It’s hard to say goodbye to Joe Thomas, but we can only hope this isn’t goodbye forever. Monday afternoon, as the Browns held their official press conference for Joe’s retirement, it was funny listening to him reflect back on all the turmoil the team has gone through in his time. Most guys, when they retire, reflect back on the wins and all the high moments. For Joe, he referenced Ray Farmer’s texts, Kyle Shannahan’s PowerPoint presentation, Brandon Weeden’s flag mishap, Johnny Manziel’s money phone. He talked about the team winning a game they thought they lost because the ball took a weird bounce off the stanchion on a game-tying FG attempt. He joked about Billy Vegas. He plugged The ThomaHawk Show. And in that way, he went out his way. Just as he came into the league doing it his way as well, fishing out on that boat, he walked away from this franchise still being himself and the guy we all love. He walked away a Cleveland Brown for life.
- It’s really hard to say that Joe Thomas, and not Bernie Kosar is my favorite football player of all time. I grew up as a kid watching Bernie play. I proudly wore #19 jerseys and I was devastated when Bill Belichick shipped Bernie out of town. But Joe Thomas choosing to play his entire career with this specific version of the Cleveland Browns is something I will never be able to fully explain how meaningful it is to me. [↩]