Browns' Joe Thomas retires after 11 seasons, gone fishin' for good | cleveland.com
http://www.cleveland.com/browns/index.ssf/2018/03/browns_joe_thomas.html#incart_2boxCLEVELAND, Ohio -- The moment the Browns hoped they could put off for another year has arrived: Joe Thomas has finally hung up the Gone Fishin' sign in his locker for good after 11 seasons.
He made the announcement in a press release on Wednesday, the start of the NFL League year.
The player who rocked the NFL boat by going fishing with his dad on Lake Michigan during the 2007 draft instead of sweating it out in the green room is walking away from the game while he still can.
In doing so, Thomas leaves a $3 million roster bonus on the table due March 18th that the Browns awarded him in November to entice him to come back from a season-ending torn triceps tendon suffered Oct. 22.
The sweetened pot would've made him the highest paid offensive lineman in the NFL at about $13.5 million a year.
Thomas, 33, grapped with the decision over the past few months, but ultimately his creaky limbs and joints provided the answer. He still loves the game and believes he can play at a high level. It wasn't even the surgically-repaired triceps that was the problem. It was his achy back and knees that forced the decision.
"You've seen that as the season wears on I just don't have anything to give during the week anymore," Thomas cleveland.com in December. "I can't practice, I can't even really stand out there and watch practice. Your body's just so beat up. Your joints, your knees, your back, you just physically can't even stand."
Knowing that Thomas was leaning towards retirement, the Browns tried hard to sign Patriots free agent left tackle Nate Solder as his replacement over the past few days. But Solder, 29, opted to sign instead with the Giants, who made him the highest paid offensive lineman in the NFL at $15.5 million a year.
As insurance against Thomas, the Browns signed two free agents tackles, Donald Stephenson and Chris Hubbard, who are both primarily right tackles. Hubbard, however, can switch to the left side if necessary. The Browns could also switch starting right tackle Shon Coleman to the left side, a player that Thomas said in 2017 could be his replacemnt. The Browns will also look for a new left tackle in the draft, where they have five picks in the first 64.
Not even a flurry of trades over the weekend that brought Pro Bowl quarterback Tyrod Taylor, three-time Pro receiver Jarvis Landry and cornerback Damarious Randall was enough to bring Thomas back.
He was especially excited about Taylor, who he'd been touting over the past few months.
"He's a great fit for the situation in Cleveland,'' Thomas said on his ThomaHawk podcast. "John Dorsey, he made an excellent move here because he didn't have to overpay for a quarterback. The talk was all about Kirk Cousins and Case Keenum and trading first and fourth picks for Nick Foles, like insanity-type stuff. In this situation you're able to get Tyrod Taylor for a third-round pick, not a huge contract.
"You give him this season and you can still draft a guy No. 1 if you want, you can draft a guy fourth. You don't even have to draft a quarterback now high in the first round if you don't love these guys and you can push that off to next year and see what you've got with Tyrod Taylor. He's a proven quarterback.''
With Thomas revealing that Taylor reminds him of Russell Wilson, it seemed he might come back for the thrill of victory.
"He's got at least a pretty good skillset, he's got a little bit of experience, more than most guys that are going to be out there and I think he's a really good fit for Hue,'' said Thomas. "If Hue works his magic like he has with some of these others guys he's worked with, he might turn out to be the franchise quarterback in Cleveland for a long time and all of a sudden you're able to get that for a third-round pick.''
Thomas was also excited about the free agent acquisitions over the past few days.
"I think the future is really bright,'' Thomas said Tuesday night at the Positive Coaching Alliance fundraiser. "Obviously, John Dorsey came here for a reason because there was a ton of cap space, a ton of money that you can spend under the salary cap on new players, and obviously the draft picks that we have are pretty impressive, really unprecedented to have the first, the fourth [overall selections] and a couple early picks in the second round.
"So although the talent hasn't been there for the team the last few years, the cupboards are not bare because of what we have coming down the pike in the next few years. For me as a player and for you guys as fans, it's a great time to be a Cleveland Brown."
But the monumental task of recovering from week-to-week became too much for Thomas, who had pretty much given up practicing over the past few seasons.
"Easily the hardest part is playing a game on Sunday and trying to get yourself healthy for the next Sunday," he told cleveland.com.
Over the past two years, Thomas began to prepare for life after football, and a possible career in broadcasting. He showed his comedic flair in The Joe Thomas Hour on clevelandbrowns.com, wrote a piece for Si.com's Monday Morning Quarterback and co-hosts the popular ThomasHawk podcast by Uninterrupted with Andrew Hawkins. He recently auditioned for Fox Sports and ESPN, and will likely land a lucractive television contract in the near future.
He became increasingly outspoken over the years, criticizing NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for player sanctions, and ripping the NFL for using college prospects as unpaid actors on draft day. He also called out cornerback Richard Sherman this week for getting "crushed'' in negotiations with the 49ers by not using an agent, and Sherman responded on Twitter. Calling out a fellow player was a sign Thomas was set to retire.
The Browns will now attempt to replace the man who announced as a rookie that he planned to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame someday and then went out and forged a gold-jacket worthy career.
Along the way, he became the fifth player in NFL history to be selected to the Pro Bowl in each of his first 10 seasons, joining Hall of Famers Barry Sanders, Lawrence Taylor, Mel Renfro and Merlin Olsen. He also became the Browns' all-time leader in Pro Bowl selections with 10, topping Hall of Famers Jim Brown (nine) and Lou Groza (nine).
He also became the only NFL offensive lineman in NFL history to make the Pro Bowl in his first 10 seasons.
The No. 3 overall pick in 2007 by then-GM Phil Savage, Thomas went on to start 167 straight games and play an NFL record 10,363 straight snaps -- before his left triceps tendon snapped in the second half of the Titans game, leaving him writhing in pain on the ground.
It's ironic that the man who reached the 10,000-snap milestone against the Ravens in Baltimore Sept. 17 left the game on an injury that snapped his streak, but he'll be remembered for the 10,362 snaps that preceded that and not the fateful career-ending one.
"I think it was just something that was ingrained in me when I was a little kid,'' Thomas said about his Iron Man streak. "It was just all about being out there to help your teammates and doing everything you can to help the team win," Thomas said. "Fighting through pain and adversity. I never really considered not going out there and giving my all because I always felt that the team and my teammates relied on me to be out there. No matter what the conditions were or what situation the team was in, I always felt that it was my job to be out there.''
Thomas leaves the game less than a year after revealing in an interview with Graham Bensinger that he's suffering from early memory loss.
"I'm just monitoring it, and I'm not worried about it right now,'' he said at the start of training camp in July. "I'm not sure if occasional memory loss is because I'm getting a little older and I have more things going on in my life or it is because of football, but basically, all you can do right now is just monitor."
Thomas, who has three young children, shared his concerns with parents and his wife, Annie, and sought medical advice.
"I talked to my parents and my mom was like, 'You know what? I forget stuff all the time,'" he said. "And I'm like, 'OK, well that's pretty normal. You didn't play in the NFL, obviously.' She just says, 'Well, that is just genetics and that is just part of getting older and that is part of having a lot of things going on in your life.'
"Just because you forgot your keys one day doesn't mean that's the canary in the coal mine. But at the same time, you have to remember that you did play in the NFL and it is a real possibility.''
Thomas leaves as the face and voice of a franchise that was never able to build a winning team around him. In his 11 seasons, they went 48-128, and his only winning season was his first, a 10-6 mark in 2007. Despite never making the playoffs, Thomas wanted to finish his career as a Cleveland Brown.He was nearly traded to Denver in 2015, but then-Browns GM Ray Farmer, wanted a first- and third-round pick instead of a first- and fifth.
He sought to finish what he started here, and always believed that winning was on the horizon. Even at the Greater Cleveland Sports Awards in January, he felt a turnaround coming on.
"Let's just say for instance they sign Kirk Cousins and they picked up, I don't know who's out in free agency, but the best skill player in free agency and you get the first and the fourth pick, whoever you want to take,'' he said. "Your team is really, really, really good all of a sudden overnight.
"And really if I think about where we were last year as a team, we weren't that far away from winning a few games. Except for a couple very terrible mistakes, we probably would've been 3-13, 4-12 and all of a sudden now you infuse 3 or 4 Hall of Famers, I would argue you have a chance to win the Super Bowl.''
It was that positive attitude that endeared him to his teammates and made him the undisputed leader of the locker room. When the Browns won their lone game in 2015 against the Chargers, Thomas came to tears in the locker room. He was so respected that Hue Jackson implored his young players to win for the future Hall of Famer.
"He's amazing,'' Jackson said during the season. "You guys know how I feel about Joe Thomas. What he's done and how he's done it is remarkable to me. We're talking about a guy who's never missed a snap. That's kind of unheard of. Now, it amazes me if anybody ever comes out of a game having been around Joe Thomas. A lot of that rubs off in our locker room. You talk about a guy who's an iron man? That's a true iron man.''
Thomas blocked for 19 starting quarterbacks during his career, and faced the best pass-rushers week and week out, rarely giving up a sack.
"I'm ready for him to get into the Hall of Fame consideration,'' Raven coach John Harbaugh said in September. "You can't be voted in the Hall of Fame when you're still playing, right? I think he should consider making a move towards the Hall of Fame and retire because we are getting tired of playing against him, but he is a great player and a great guy."
Former Browns left tackle Doug Dieken, who holds the club record for 203 starts, marvels at Thomas' career.
"The most remarkable thing is the quality of the 10,000,'' he said during the season. "A lot of people could probably play 10,000 snaps but not at that level. You take the talent and it's the dependability, it's the quality, and Joe has exceeded it. Nobody's done it better, not only the play that he's had but the quality of person that he is.''
Dieken stressed that Thomas got the opponent's best shot every week.
"You always know the other tackle is going to get the tight end or the other tackle is going to get the chip, or they're going to slide the protection that way,'' he said. "Joe was always on an island."
He added, "He's such a true professional. He works at his craft. He puts a lot of time into his technique. Everything he does, he does it for a purpose and not only that, the way he studies opponents and the way he understands the offense, and the rest of the things that are on the team, he's just a complete football player. The sad thing is, you'd like to see him get in the playoffs. You don't want him to be the Dick Butkus of the NFL: In the Hall of Fame and no playoff games.''
Thomas also set the tone for teammates such as center Alex Mack, now with Atlanta, who didn't miss a game after an appendectomy, and left guard Joel Bitonio, who gutted it out on a bad ankle injury in 2015 and Lisfranc foot injury last year.
"My second year, I hadn't missed a snap the first 16 weeks of my rookie year and the first 10 weeks of my second year and I went out there and I got rolled up on bad against Cincinnati and it hurt like a mother, but I was like, 'Joe hasn't missed a freakin' snap, I can't tap myself out for this,''' said Bitonio.
"So I finished that half and I went in and they're doing all these tests and they retaped it and they're like, 'you can play now, we'll see how it is after the game,' and so I finished that game and then they told me it's going to be a couple weeks. But when you're playing next to someone, you're like, 'oh, he's been through this, he can do it, I can do it type of mentality.'"
Thomas welled up back in September when talking about the example he tried to set.
"I hope can maybe inspire them to be better than they expect from even themselves in the face of difficulty or injury or difficult times, which from time to time you will face in the NFL," he said. "It's easy to fold up the tent and pack in your stuff and go home when you're not having a winning season or when you're not having a great game and you're losing by a lot.
"But hopefully I'm maybe a small inspiration for those guys that even though maybe it doesn't matter on a scoreboard or a record sheet, every play really does matter in the NFL. So if you can be out there to help your teammates, you should be out there."
Unfortunately for the Browns, for the fans and for his teammates, he won't be anymore.
Joe Thomas, likely first-ballot Hall of Famer, is really gone fishin' this time.
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