Andrew Thomas will step foot Sunday on a field that should have a commemorative landmark identifying it as the site where a dominant left tackle’s brilliance was wasted.
Hall of Famer Joe Thomas played an NFL-record 10,363 consecutive snaps and made 10 Pro Bowls during an 11-year career with the Browns that resulted in a .287 career winning percentage and zero playoff appearances.
He was a rock through a revolving door of six head coaches and 20 starting quarterbacks from 2007-2017.
The Giants have not reached that level of futility, and Andrew Thomas has not approached Joe Thomas’ standards, but another 0-2 start suggests a long playoff-less season is ahead for the fourth time in Andrew Thomas’ five-year career — even as he is the NFL’s top-graded pass-blocking offensive tackle, per Pro Football Focus.
“It’s really cool to see him go through the struggles that he did [as a rookie] and deal with that adversity,” Joe Thomas told The Post. “The toughness and the fortitude that he learned early on in his career is paying dividends because he is a mentally tough dude. He is showing great performance in the face of a challenging situation.”
Joe Thomas, a former NFL Network analyst, is an expert in finding the motivation when losses are piling up. He will be closely watching Andrew Thomas in Sunday’s Giants-Browns game.
“It can be a little dejecting to play as well as you possibly can and still have that crappy feeling,” Joe Thomas said. “You have to find a way to continue to push yourself to be better even though it doesn’t affect the outcome positively the way other positions can.
“Probably the biggest thing that drove me every day was my love for my teammates. If you are motivated by your own goals personally more than team success or the success of your teammates, that is going to be a little bit hollow. If you are in a situation where your team is not having success, you are not going to get the most out of yourself because it’s easy in those situations to put in a little less effort than you should.”
Andrew Thomas, 25, echoes a lot of Joe Thomas’ thoughts, as if they are both reading from the “Offensive Tackle Handbook.” The three-time co-captain is the only Giant signed through 2029 (five-year, $117.5 million contract) and has a chance to become a franchise great if he stays healthy and keeps improving.
“We’re getting paid a king’s ransom to play a child’s game,” Andrew Thomas told The Post. “Obviously, you want to win, but how I look at it — and I’m sure how Joe Thomas, one of the best ever, looked at it — is how can I not only make myself better but make the people around me better. I struggled when I first got here, got my feet settled and started to excel, so I put more pressure on myself to try to bring the guys around me up.”
With three new starters added this offseason, the long-criticized Giants offensive line is showing signs of life despite the 0-2 start.
“When you are losing, you don’t have a lot of continuity. People are looking for change,” Andrew Thomas said. “I’m obviously not to Joe Thomas’ standard, but I’m always trying to reach for that regardless of the situation. Honestly, it is hard sometimes. When you are down by 25, are you covering down [on a block] like you should be or are you just getting by? Sometimes, I find myself in that situation, and to be great I have to push myself to perform at the same level and that will bring other guys up.”
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Salary-cap spending confirms the belief of most NFL team-builders: Left tackle is the second-most important position after quarterback.
So, why doesn’t it have more of an impact on winning?
“Left tackle is the second-most important, but not the second-most impactful position,” Joe Thomas said. “Left tackles are like the brakes in your car: You are not going anywhere without them, but they also can’t take you anywhere and oftentimes are forgotten until they don’t work.”
The Giants are 21-35-1 (.377) when Andrew Thomas plays and 4-8 (.333) when he doesn’t.
The 2022 Second-Team All-Pro missed seven games last season with a foot injury that general manager Joe Schoen cites as the turning point in a lost season.
He entered this season ranked No. 29 on PFF’s list of top NFL players and No. 8 at offensive tackle in an ESPN league-wide survey of talent evaluators.
Andrew Thomas critiques his game film with a perfectionist’s eye.
Left tackles prevent disaster but can’t score points or create turnovers like other stars.
“In the passing game, doing your job is the quarterback not getting hit,” Andrew Thomas said. “Where offensive linemen can make a difference is run game. We can create explosive plays.”
Joe Thomas hit a breaking point in his 10th season.
With both knees wrapped in ice, he cried driving home after a blowout loss to the Patriots, after he had been convinced the Browns had a winning game plan.
“I played a perfect game,” he said he told his wife. “I literally could not have done one thing different to help my team win and we lost by [20] and I feel this hopeless feeling and lack of control. I don’t know how to handle it because it’s emotionally draining.’”
Joe Thomas credits his wife and Browns sports psychologists at the time for getting through “mental struggles.”
The Giants still have time to capitalize on Andrew Thomas’ greatness. If a right-handed rookie quarterback arrives next year, his blind side will be protected.
“Andrew reacts like a cat when guys are counter-moving him,” Joe Thomas said. “He rarely gets himself out of balance and in bad positions. He is able to use the power he creates from the ground up to be able to stymie pass-rushers and create separation in the run game.”
Maybe Sunday will mark the start of it translating to more wins.
“Team success brings individual success,” Andrew Thomas said. “The mentality is to win because you are winning for a reason. If you are not winning, try to figure out how to win. That’s where we’re at right now. In 2022, we went to the playoffs, it was the most fun I’ve had. It’s breaking that mentality of losing and having the mindset that we’re going to finish and play to a standard.”
