Post by JABF on Dec 7, 2016 12:35:51 GMT -6
This reminded me of some of the great Bears of the past 30 years who never got to hoist the Lombardi Trophy. Guys who gave it their "all" here in Chicago and never got a sniff of a SB ring. We have our own "Factory of Sadness" here in Chicago. The "Big Uglies" have kept showing up each year... blue collar guys fighting the wars in the trenches. I hope this isn't Kyle Long's fate too.
LINK
Joe Thomas' 9,684 straight shifts in the Factory of Sadness
Joe Thomas, Loyal Lineman
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. The things Thomas has seen in 10 seasons would make your chinstrap curl: Johnny Manziel's off-the-wagon spiral, the Rob Chudzinski experiment (all 12 months of it), the winter wearing-of-the-paper-bags ritual. 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.
Soon, Thomas could be playing through the saddest footnote of all: 0-16.
The Browns have 12 losses and zero victories, and could become just the fifth team since the end of World War II and the second since the 2008 Detroit Lions to go winless during an NFL season. Big, tough men have cried, including first-year Browns coach Hue Jackson, but Thomas exhibits the no-nonsense demeanor of a factory worker.
Take, for example, that 35-10 loss to the Cowboys on Nov. 6. Thomas trudged off the field, past the painted letters in the hallway that say, "Expect to Win," and broke the tension of the locker room by contemplating how his 312-pound body would look in the uniform for the next game.
"It's going to be rough next week," Thomas told a teammate. "All-whites.
"I'm going to be on low-carb diet."
Laughter is his coping mechanism, a way to get through this. Joe Thomas won't lose it, because the whole team is watching. But when he gets home, his wife, Annie, says she can "see the pain and sadness after every game."
It doesn't seem fair. Thomas has been named to nine Pro Bowls, and likely will get to the Hall of Fame someday, but he can't get a whiff of the playoffs.
The closest he came was last season. The trade deadline approached in early November, and Denver was interested. But the deal fell through -- his agent, Peter Schaffer, says the negotiations "ran out of time" -- and the Broncos won a Super Bowl and Thomas wound up at home, saddled with the anxiety of another coaching change, a new front office and a whole batch of new teammates.
"He's given a lot of himself, physically, emotionally and spiritually to that team and organization," former teammate Scott Fujita said. "I'd be lying if I didn't say that when I hear trade rumors about Joe, sometimes I hope they're true."
But Thomas isn't going anywhere. He believes, even in these difficult days, that Cleveland is exactly where he needs to be.
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."
It's human nature for a player to check out, at least mentally, when his team is out of the playoff picture by Halloween. Thomas has practically had to beg to stay in on a couple of occasions.
In 2014, the Browns were beating the Pittsburgh Steelers, manhandling them, actually, when then-coach Mike Pettine told backup Vinston Painter to go in and replace Thomas; the coach didn't want his best player getting hurt in mop-up duty. Pettine was in his first year, and didn't know any better. Thomas did a double take when he saw Painter.
"Get the f--- out of here," he told Painter.
The poor backup went down the line to see whether anyone else wanted to be spelled before sadly heading back to the sideline.
"Why didn't you come out?" Pettine asked Thomas when the offense came off the field.
"I haven't missed a snap, and I'm not coming out when we're finally winning a game," Thomas told him. "I'm going to enjoy this."
A few years ago, Thomas remembers hurting his knee in a game and limping around for at least two quarters. When he got an MRI, it showed that he'd torn his lateral collateral ligament. Luckily for him, it was the last game of the season. The Browns' doctors surely would have made him sit out for a while.
"My mentality from the day I started playing sports was that you get up, you dust yourself off and you do it again," Thomas says. "Some people lay on the ground after they get hurt and they say, 'Boy, that hurts. I wonder if I'm hurt. I'd better get it checked out.' That's not part of my thought process.
"My mind is going to tell my body I can do this, and if my body can't do it and I fall to the ground, then you know it's time to get it checked out."
It used to be that Sundays and Mondays were the worst days for Thomas because the biggest pain he felt was from the losing. Now that he's 32, Tuesdays by far are the hardest. All of his joints ache. His shoulders hurt so badly that it feels as if he's been hit by a car. Tuesdays are off-days, so the loss is still smacking him in the face, too.
But by Wednesday, when the team meets for practice, Thomas is reinvigorated. He's ready to prepare for the next opponent. For nearly 10 years, he's always believed the same thing: The Browns will beat their next opponent.
Joe Thomas' 9,684 straight shifts in the Factory of Sadness
Joe Thomas, Loyal Lineman
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. The things Thomas has seen in 10 seasons would make your chinstrap curl: Johnny Manziel's off-the-wagon spiral, the Rob Chudzinski experiment (all 12 months of it), the winter wearing-of-the-paper-bags ritual. 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.
Soon, Thomas could be playing through the saddest footnote of all: 0-16.
The Browns have 12 losses and zero victories, and could become just the fifth team since the end of World War II and the second since the 2008 Detroit Lions to go winless during an NFL season. Big, tough men have cried, including first-year Browns coach Hue Jackson, but Thomas exhibits the no-nonsense demeanor of a factory worker.
Take, for example, that 35-10 loss to the Cowboys on Nov. 6. Thomas trudged off the field, past the painted letters in the hallway that say, "Expect to Win," and broke the tension of the locker room by contemplating how his 312-pound body would look in the uniform for the next game.
"It's going to be rough next week," Thomas told a teammate. "All-whites.
"I'm going to be on low-carb diet."
Laughter is his coping mechanism, a way to get through this. Joe Thomas won't lose it, because the whole team is watching. But when he gets home, his wife, Annie, says she can "see the pain and sadness after every game."
It doesn't seem fair. Thomas has been named to nine Pro Bowls, and likely will get to the Hall of Fame someday, but he can't get a whiff of the playoffs.
The closest he came was last season. The trade deadline approached in early November, and Denver was interested. But the deal fell through -- his agent, Peter Schaffer, says the negotiations "ran out of time" -- and the Broncos won a Super Bowl and Thomas wound up at home, saddled with the anxiety of another coaching change, a new front office and a whole batch of new teammates.
"He's given a lot of himself, physically, emotionally and spiritually to that team and organization," former teammate Scott Fujita said. "I'd be lying if I didn't say that when I hear trade rumors about Joe, sometimes I hope they're true."
But Thomas isn't going anywhere. He believes, even in these difficult days, that Cleveland is exactly where he needs to be.
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."
It's human nature for a player to check out, at least mentally, when his team is out of the playoff picture by Halloween. Thomas has practically had to beg to stay in on a couple of occasions.
In 2014, the Browns were beating the Pittsburgh Steelers, manhandling them, actually, when then-coach Mike Pettine told backup Vinston Painter to go in and replace Thomas; the coach didn't want his best player getting hurt in mop-up duty. Pettine was in his first year, and didn't know any better. Thomas did a double take when he saw Painter.
"Get the f--- out of here," he told Painter.
The poor backup went down the line to see whether anyone else wanted to be spelled before sadly heading back to the sideline.
"Why didn't you come out?" Pettine asked Thomas when the offense came off the field.
"I haven't missed a snap, and I'm not coming out when we're finally winning a game," Thomas told him. "I'm going to enjoy this."
A few years ago, Thomas remembers hurting his knee in a game and limping around for at least two quarters. When he got an MRI, it showed that he'd torn his lateral collateral ligament. Luckily for him, it was the last game of the season. The Browns' doctors surely would have made him sit out for a while.
"My mentality from the day I started playing sports was that you get up, you dust yourself off and you do it again," Thomas says. "Some people lay on the ground after they get hurt and they say, 'Boy, that hurts. I wonder if I'm hurt. I'd better get it checked out.' That's not part of my thought process.
"My mind is going to tell my body I can do this, and if my body can't do it and I fall to the ground, then you know it's time to get it checked out."
It used to be that Sundays and Mondays were the worst days for Thomas because the biggest pain he felt was from the losing. Now that he's 32, Tuesdays by far are the hardest. All of his joints ache. His shoulders hurt so badly that it feels as if he's been hit by a car. Tuesdays are off-days, so the loss is still smacking him in the face, too.
But by Wednesday, when the team meets for practice, Thomas is reinvigorated. He's ready to prepare for the next opponent. For nearly 10 years, he's always believed the same thing: The Browns will beat their next opponent.
