Joe Thomas Naming All 18 QBs He's Blocked for is Grace Personified
Can you name all the QBs who have started for the Browns over the last decade? Joe Thomas, the guy who’s protected all 18, gave it a shot. pic.twitter.com/7dlnHxezlt
— E:60 (@E60) August 17, 2017
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You have to pity Joe Thomas. He’s the football equivalent of a purebred show dog who, through no fault of his own, ends up staring at you through a cage to a Sarah McLaughlin song. Watching his video you just want to adopt him and give him a big fenced-in backyard he can run around with and feed him from the table.
Just to put this in perspective, when Thomas was a rookie the Browns won 10 games. In the nine seasons since, they’ve won more than five games exactly once (7-9 in 2014) with a winning percentage of .263. He hasn’t missed a start in his career. In six of the last eight years he’s had the highest AV on his team. And the only people in Cleveland feeling good right now are on Molly.
And yet here Thomas is, able to recognize the utter futility of the situation. Appreciating the ridiculousness of a life spent protecting quarterbacks who aren’t worth protecting. And being able to laugh at the absurdity of it all rather than despair. As the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger put it, “Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.”
And goddamn if watching Thomas recite the names on this list, this Suicide Squad of losers, shouldn’t make everyone who cares about football and humanity want to rescue him from the utter hopelessness and put him on a team that deserves him. Keep doing you, Joe Thomas. Keep doing you.
