Lucas: Joe Thomas taking pride in his ‘Titan Games’ triumph
May 28, 2020 | Football, Mike Lucas
Badgers great earns respect of The Rock in winning made-for-TV competition
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BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
MADISON, Wis. — Joe Thomas hadn't felt this way in a long time. He was nervous; something he hadn't experienced since the first half of his NFL career with the Cleveland Browns when the former University of Wisconsin All-American was still establishing himself as a perennial All-Pro left tackle.
In the seventh of his 11 seasons, he remembered the pre-competition anxiety going away.
"After playing 100-plus games in the NFL, I kind of knew how things were going to happen," said Thomas, a nine-time All-Pro. "I knew how I was going to do. I knew how the guy I was going against was going to be. I felt pretty confident. I didn't get nervous anymore during my career."
Thomas retired in March of 2018. He was 33.
"But with this," he was saying about the source of his newfound insecurity, "there were so many unknowns and you don't want to get embarrassed … I knew this was something that was a little out of my comfort zone; something I had never done before. And I was pretty nervous going into it."
This was a made-for-television, NBC primetime show, "The Titan Games." Thomas had no frame of reference for the competition, a hybrid of the "American Gladiators" and "American Ninja Warrior" productions. He hadn't even watched the first season of "The Titan Games" in 2019.
"You're doing something you've never really practiced," said Thomas, who has lost over 70 pounds since his playing days. "You know you're in good shape, you know you're kind of ready. But you don't know who you're going against. And you don't know how well you're going to do on the obstacles.
"And then, there's The Rock over there and he's kind of counting on me."
Thomas could smell what The Rock was cooking (up) for him as the show's host.
"The Rock handpicked me to be on his team of pros," he said of the legendary Dwayne Johnson, the former WWE Superstar and a cinematic action hero whose films have grossed over $10 billion worldwide. "Obviously, I have enormous respect for him. I just think his story is so cool."
Thomas liked the fact that Johnson was a college football player, a defensive tackle for the Miami Hurricanes and a member of the 1991 team that won the national championship. After his career was shortened by injuries, The Rock earned fame and success as a professional wrestler.
Growing up, Thomas followed the Ultimate Warrior, the Undertaker and Hulk Hogan.
"Once I really got into sports, I didn't have as much time to be a wrestling fan," he said. "I just didn't watch it anymore because I was so busy with baseball, basketball, football and track. But when The Rock came on the scene, I was actually a bigger fan of his movies than of him as a wrestling star.
"That's how I got my kids excited about me going on "The Titan Games."
"I said, 'Do you know your dad is doing a TV show with Maui?'"
The Rock voiced Maui in the Disney animated movie "Moana."
"My kids love Maui," Thomas gushed.
Joe and wife Annie have four young children. And family considerations factored into his decision-making upon accepting an offer to join the cast of "The Titan Games." Thomas' agent had presented him with some other potential TV opportunities with the Discovery Channel and A&E.
But some of the proposed show concepts had little or no appeal.
"It was like, 'Okay, we're going to put you in the wilderness and film for four months and we're going to recreate all these survival mode things with you,'" said Thomas, who had no interest in being away from his family that long. "When I'd come back, there'd be no family, so that's no option."
By sharp contrast, "The Titan Games" sounded like a good fit from the start.
Especially when Thomas heard the filming would last only a week.
"Sign me up," he instructed his agent with one caveat. "You know I played 11 years in the NFL and I had to retire because of injuries. The only way I can do it is if you promise there's no running, because if there's any running, I'm just going to quit and walk off the set because I can't run."
Thomas retired because his knees wore out.
"They told me, 'Don't worry, it's all pushing and pulling-type stuff — stuff that you're probably doing training-wise anyway,'" relayed Thomas, who agreed to be a participant in "The Titan Games," which were taped in an Atlanta movie studio the second week of February on the heels of the Super Bowl.
Thomas could see the palm trees from the set where The Rock filmed "Jumanji."
"It wasn't until I got to Atlanta," Thomas said, "and I was warming up for my competition that the producer came over and told me, 'Dwayne wants to talk to you. He wants to say thank you and kind of give you a little motivation. That was really cool."
The Rock expressed his respect for Thomas and his Hall of Fame career.
Though he was out of his element, Thomas didn't want to let him down as a Titan.
"I didn't want to let anybody down," he said. "I didn't want to let myself down. I didn't want to let my family down. I didn't want to let Badger Nation down. I didn't want to let Browns Nation down. You do start second-guessing yourself a little bit, 'I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this?'"
But he was up for the physical challenge.
"After I retired, I always enjoyed working out. So, I've been doing yoga and biking and swimming for cardio and lifting weights. I try to do something every day. I get up and work on the farm. I'm in good shape. It's one of the reasons why they picked me, why The Rock wanted me, an NFL ironman."
Thomas bought a farm in southwest Wisconsin ("Beef cattle, corn, soybeans") about five years into his pro career. And he split his training between there and his Madison home.
To get a feel for the competition, he did his homework on the obstacles and the Mount Olympus course.
"I watched some of the shows from the year before," he said. "And I started to extend my workouts. In the NFL, a play is three to five seconds. It's a short burst. The obstacle course was about three to four minutes, so I trained for longer periods of maximum effort work."
But here's the catch: Thomas was not allowed a trial run on Mount Olympus.
"I still didn't know what I was getting myself into until the day before the show when they gave you the walk-through on the course," he said. "They have someone who shows you how the apparatus works but they don't let you use any of it; they don't let you do the course.
"They don't even let you touch the stuff until you're actually doing it the first time."
The first show aired Monday night and Thomas won both of his matchups.
After his initial win, a split-second decision, he nearly passed out.
"The three minutes was like doing an entire NFL game," he said. "If you can imagine playing 65 NFL plays, doing them back to back to back without stopping, it was that level of exhaustion. It's hard for me to play the ranking game, but I will say I was really proud of myself for winning a couple of matches."
Size mattered. Until it didn't. The 6-foot-5 Thomas lost time in what he called the "hamster cage" and what turned out to be his "nemesis" on the course. He likened the obstacle to crawling up and down through an air vent, 18 inches by 18 inches square.
"I lost a bunch of time on that," he said. "They wanted to give as much of an advantage to the smaller people as possible … everything else was like a cake walk for me being a former NFL offensive lineman. I'm used to picking up stuff and pushing stuff."
During the competition, Thomas maximized his strengths.
Like dragging a 300-pound ball and chain attached to a sledgehammer.
Thomas applied his analytical football mindset to the challenge.
"I have biomechanics understanding of objects and apparatus and how they worked, and I had to fall back on my experience in the NFL," he said. "Dragging it backwards would be inefficient, especially for me as an offensive lineman who was used to pushing.
"I tried to look at it and use geometry where I can throw this chain over my shoulder and drag it using my bigger muscles and my butt. It just so happened it worked pretty well. And that was the difference. Nobody was able to keep up with me. That's where I made up my time on the smaller guys."
Thomas drew raves from The Rock for his performance and got immediate feedback from his showing in the form of well over 100 text messages. On Tuesday, he conducted seven media interviews before noon. Five were from outside of Wisconsin. That's how fast he blew up as a national celebrity.
"That's what everyone was saying, 'You realize nobody knows who you are, but as soon as you hang out with The Rock and he starts tweeting, you're going to explode,'" he said, laughing. "They were right about that. It's unbelievable. Obviously, I knew he was the world's biggest entertainment star.
"But I was not totally ready for all the attention that show is going to give me."
Annie kept him grounded.
"You couldn't beat that first guy by more?" she posed.
Thomas narrowly edged Matt Chan, a firefighter, in his first match.
"He was No. 2 in the CrossFit games a couple of years ago and one of the fittest men on the planet," Thomas said in his defense. "I'm basically the amateur and he's the pro. I'm doing obstacles that he has already proven that he's one of the best at doing.
"I'm just a former football player trying to play in his world."
Thomas paused.
"But I felt pretty good about how I did."
So did Maui.
