NFL Nine Thousand, Six Hundred and Eighty-Four

[BeinPurplenGreen]

No, not the Donald's average solarium stay in minutes.

Instead, a rather extra-ordinary achievement by one of the most under-rated players ever...

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/st...e-thomas-9684-straight-shifts-factory-sadness

The 106th loss of Joe Thomas' NFL career was, predictably, melancholic. It came on an unseasonably warm November day in Cleveland, in a stadium overrun by acres of silver-and-blue Dallas Cowboys gear. A woman in Browns apparel fell asleep in her seat. There was a fight on the field at the beginning and a spirited first-quarter Cleveland drive, but inevitably, cold reality settled in like winters on Lake Erie.​

Did anyone notice what Thomas did? Down there in that mess, he played his 9,500th straight snap. He's never sat out one single play, according to the Browns. It's a stunning stat, especially when you consider that Thomas, arguably the NFL's best left tackle, has spent his entire career in Cleveland, a place in which there is generally nothing to play for by December.​

Through it all, the one true thing that has endured is Thomas, whose streak (now at 9,684) has survived six head coaches and 18 starting quarterbacks.​

 

[offtherails9]

Poor dude, why wouldn't he request a trade?

 

[BeinPurplenGreen]

Poor dude, why wouldn't he request a trade?

THERE IS SOMETHING romantic, or maybe maniacal, about a man who comes to work every day, pours his heart and soul into preparing for a game and does so well that he grades off the charts, but loses that game nearly every week and still comes back every Monday for more.

In Greek mythology, a guy named Sisyphus was punished by being forced to roll a gigantic boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back repeatedly, for eternity. That's Joe Thomas, seemingly. But Thomas didn't do anything wrong to warrant his boulder.

He is so genuine, so real, that when he sits at his locker and explains why he's glad that he wasn't traded, why he wants to be in Cleveland, you wind up believing him, even though he's about to get crushed again.

"I'm a Clevelander," he says. "I've spent the majority of my adult life here. Every day when I come to work, it's 'Let's turn this team into a consistent winner.' Because it would be such a special story. It would be like when the Cubs won the World Series. Everybody in the country has probably been cheering for them for so long because they've been suffering for so long. And you want to cheer for teams like the Browns.

"It's a blue-collar city, and for a blue-collar guy like myself, it's easy to fall in love with the people and kind of the chip on the shoulder that a lot of people have because they feel like they've been slighted for so long. It's so important for me to be here for the turnaround. I don't want to just get a Super Bowl ring [by] being traded to a dream team. It would feel unsatisfying. Unfulfilling."​

 

[BeinPurplenGreen]

ON SUNDAY NIGHTS, Thomas goes home, lies down with his wife and three kids and watches the late football games. He is happy that his children are all under the age of 4 and don't know whether he's won or lost. They kiss his wounds and take his mind off of the sacks and the scoreboard and the large bags of ice wrapped around his knees.

"I hope that someday the kids will think what he did for a living was pretty cool," Annie says in an email. "But for right now they just think he wears a funny helmet and tights."

Maybe someday, they'll know why Thomas did this, why he kept pushing that boulder up even though it kept crashing down on him.

"I'm hired to do a job," he says. "They expect me to do a job, and that job requires me to get my butt up and get back to the huddle, get the play and go do it another time. And until I can't physically get up, I'm going to do that.

"Until they pull me out of the game and say, 'You're not doing it well enough,' I'm going to just keep getting up."

 

[offtherails9]

That's cool and I respect that. 9 Pro Bowl games is fantastic, but he's only got a few years left and at the most the Browns are winning a playoff game max before he retires and that's stretching it. Will he make the Hall of Fame? I don't really know much about that so I guess that might fill some of the hollow-ness.

 

[BeinPurplenGreen]

That's cool and I respect that. 9 Pro Bowl games is fantastic, but he's only got a few years left and at the most the Browns are winning a playoff game max before he retires and that's stretching it. Will he make the Hall of Fame? I don't really know much about that so I guess that might fill some of the hollow-ness.

Totally agree. I love his self-lessness, but it would be great to see him take a trade to GBP or NEP or Raiders, and win a superbowl in his last ever game (like David Ross did with the Cubs in baseball this year).

For me, the bigger story is how the hell he has managed to stay healthy enough to not miss a single snap in so many years. Some would argue it is easy when your offense is never on the field for more than three snaps in a row (sorry AmericanCrow) but even allowing for that offensive ineptitude, Joe has had an amazing run that could teach many NFL players lots about managing injuries and playing through pain...

 

[drd23]

Joe has had an amazing run that could teach many NFL players lots about managing injuries and playing through pain...

On that, I read a good article today on 4 different players and their recovery methods http://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/brutal-monday-nfl-postgame-steelers-ravens-saints-jaguars-120516

 

[Blacky]

Playing that many snaps for the Browns he could definitely provide advice for dealing with pain