DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum this got to me

It is really sad and he's probably not the only player that felt that way.

His dedication and sense of honor is becoming more and more rare these days. The world could use a lot more people like Joe Thomas and a lot less people like Deshaun Watson.

Football was a lot more to Joe Thomas than just a paycheck. Thanks for posting this bone.

On one hand, I sympathize with Joe. On the other, it reminds me what a messed up outlook modern society has towards winning. Some things can't be won no matter what an individual does. Yet, "winning" is how too many things are measured. We put too much emphasis on an end result that is out of anyone's control instead of focusing on how people act while trying to get there. Some groups start with more resources and are more likely to be able to win. The illusion of parity, and the, perhaps, not quite wholesale lie that anyone can win if they are just willing to sacrifice everything, is a terrible burden people allow themselves to carry. Sometimes there simply is no winning because factors outside your control are stacked against you. Just the underlying assumptions we have about what winning is at times seem problematic.

Living the best you can is the only "winning" you have any control over. Unfortunately, I think how we define that best can be flawed, and what we consider winning certainly can have its own issues.

Joe's a winner in my book.

Sports in and of itself is predicated on winners and losers. That's the subject matter.

It's not a topic about life in general or some philosophical discussion. Focus.

How many participation trophies have you handed out in your lifetime?

Pro sports are ALL about winning. There is no other perceived value to the franchise, coaches, players or fans. That is all that matters.

Of course Joe is a winner, the person, which he got his personal super bowl trophy in the form of induction into the HOF. That is the individual form of winning... along with the other accolades he accumulated like All-Pro etc...

I think the premise of parity in sports is a fantasy. Expecting the Browns, or any team, to win is setting one's self up for disappointment. Could it happen? Sure. But the QBs that end up in the draft are beyond the Browns control, as are many other things.

While yes there are winners and losers in sports as we have set them up, putting the focus on that rather than the competition itself is in some ways troublesome to me. Pretending all the teams have the same chance of winning isn't really true.

Yes, we as a society have frequently looked at it as winning is all that matters in Sports as Irish and others say. Yet, I think looking at it that way isn't the only way it could be looked at.

I get that all you worry about is winning (i.e, an argument without considering the ramifications of what you have to do to try to twist things around to make it so.) I find the trying to win anything at any cost approach BS.

I think doing things the right way should be admired more than the winning. Winning is in some ways incidental.

Yes, my argument could have been applied elsewhere, but I hadn't gone there.

I'm not a big trophy guy. Received plenty, but they just end up in a box in storage. My argument is not about rewarding participation. Its about respecting honorable competition regardless of the result.

"We" have chosen to make it "all" about winning. It seems that, as a species, we've been conditioned to look at basically "all" things that way.

If there was no other value, there would be no Browns fans. Thus, it appears that there is some other value. Not all those values are necessarily good, either. To some, Pro sports is about making money. Haslam is doing that just fine. It could be about respecting the competition. It could be about enjoying the entertainment.

Professional sports is all about winning. I'm not a professional athlete. This isn't about me so you can stop with your obvious personal crap. This isn't the political forum. That petty BS has no place here. Nobody said anything about "winning at all costs" until you interjected it.


Once again, nobody said anything about winning by not doing things the right way.


But you have certainly implied it. Professional athletes make up less than 0.01% of the total U.S. population. Somehow you have now made a feeble attempt to open that up to the other 99.99% of the population and drag some personal agenda from the political forum into it.

Sad, just sad.

Bonefish expanded the subject to all of life before I did. Joe expanded to all of life in the article. You're the one that insists on making things personal with me (and anyone else who has the audacity to express an opinion that disagrees with what you believe), then you act surprised when people react to it. Poking the bear then playing victim is your schtick. It has been old to me for about a decade.

No one may have literally said winning by not doing things the right way, but they "certainly implied it" when they claimed things like "[winning] is all that matters" and there is "no other perceived value."

Professional athletes are also humans with lives. Attitudes prevalent throughout society can apply to sports. Just because they are .01% of the population doesn't mean that things that apply to all humanity don't apply to them as well. Players on 31 of the 32 teams literally can't win the Super Bowl every year. Winning it all is a goal that ~96.8% of NFL players can't possibly achieve every year. Looking at it as the only thing that matters is setting one's self up for failure. Winning is beyond any individual's control. Everyone wants to win, but trying to convince yourself every year that you are going to win the Super Bowl is a recipe for a nervous breakdown.

Your inability to allow others to have opinions you disagree with without acting out is sad. If You don't like philosophical discussion, you should ignore my posts. The PitDAWG, board police, everyone has to focus on what you think they should focus on act is annoying as hell.

.

Bone...I hope it's ok that I'm going to post the article as an addition to the link you posted. I hope everyone takes a moment to read the story.



“Damn, Sorry”: Julian Edelman Issues Apology After Browns Legend Joe Thomas Says He Cried Over 20-Point Loss to Patriots

Sep 16, 2026 | 12:26 AM EDT
Krushna Prasad Pattnaik
link

Joe Thomas built a Hall of Fame career in Cleveland, but even one of the greatest tackles in NFL history could not save the Browns from being the Browns. In 2016, New England walked into Cleveland and handed them a brutal 33-13 loss, another ugly reminder of just how far the franchise had fallen. For most players, it might have been another bad Sunday. For Thomas, it was the game that finally broke through years of denial.


“I remember sitting in the car after the game, and I was just crying,” Thomas said during his recent appearance on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast. “I had ice on both elbows and knees. I was in pain. My wife was driving, and I was just looking out the window. It was that moment when I realized I’d been kind of fooling myself for a while, and we were not going to win, no matter what I did.”


The confession quickly caught Julian Edelman’s attention after sports and entertainment veteran @dank shared the clip on X. The former Patriots star jumped into the replies, writing, “Damn, sorry about that one big dog.” The original post was later removed from X.

But that loss did more than hurt. It broke something in Thomas, and his wife could see it.


“She finally said, ‘Are you okay? Did you have a bad game?’ Then the tears really came because I said, ‘I played a perfect game, and we lost by 30.’ It really sunk in at that moment that you don’t control the situation anymore. That feeling of loss of control is really hard. No matter what situation you’re in, in life, it just feels like everything I’m working for, I have no control over the outcome. That’s a bad feeling.”

Thomas referred to it as a 30-point loss, though the Patriots won the game 33-13, a 20-point margin.

Thomas entered 2016 determined to squeeze everything he could out of himself, even if that meant convincing himself Cleveland could contend. The problem was that the Browns were clearly rebuilding. They had traded down from the No. 2 pick in the draft, prioritized future assets, and were nowhere close to operating like a Super Bowl team.

Then Tom Brady came to Cleveland. Thomas badly wanted the Patriots game to prove that all that belief still meant something. Instead, New England beat the Browns 33-13, and the illusion finally collapsed. Thomas could play nearly flawless football, and it still was not enough to change where Cleveland was headed.


“I ended up meeting with the team psychologist and talking to somebody about it because it had been almost 10 years built up to that moment when you come to the realization that I’m kind of fooling myself,” the former tackle continued. “We’re not that team, and we really don’t have a chance. And I don’t impact this game the way I’d hoped.”

That became the cruel contradiction of Thomas’ career. He made 10 Pro Bowls, earned six First-Team All-Pro selections, played 10,363 consecutive offensive snaps and eventually entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But for all that individual greatness, he never played a single postseason game.

Staying on topic isn't a complicated matter. Not everything in life is a philosophical discussion.

That fact you try to make it so is annoying as hell.

I don't put people on ignore. I leave that to others who don't like what the opposing side has to say and refuse to hear anything and everything they don't wish to hear. You know, they love that information tunnel that's to their liking only.

But I'm not going to continue with this back and forth on this topic. This is a very good topic about the best player the Browns have had since the Browns returned in 1999. About his competitive spirit and his desire to win. About how much it meant to him as it does with most pro athletes. After all, that's the measure of success in professional sports. I mean this isn't T-Ball or Little League.

Not everything in life is a philosophical discussion unless of course you consider yourself some expert in philosophy and think everything in life has some deeper meaning often times where none exists.

j/c...

I fail to see how a conversation about a beloved member of the team you root for...

Who is often mentioned as Mt Rushmore type talent...

Who is a first-ballot HOFer...

Who cried after playing what he saw as a "perfect game" because his team still got curb-stomped...

Wouldn't include subject matter about the philosophy of sports.

Maybe that's just me.

Or maybe it's really non of my business what people want to talk about or how the choose to participate.

So, I digress. Let this conversation get "back on topic" lol