Iron Man Down

The NFL’s portrait of staying power just missed his first game in 10-plus years—that’s 167 straight starts, or 10,363 snaps—but this Browns tackle knows the league won’t stop to mourn him.

- Joe Thomas

IT’S STRANGE what you think about when your season ends prematurely—really strange for me, considering that in 10 1 ⁄2 years with the Browns,since opening day 2007, I had never missed a single play. That’s 10,363 consecutive downs, the longest streak in NFL history. That changed in Week 7, when I tore my left triceps trying to push away Tennessee linebacker Brian Orakpo.

Over and over in the day or two after my tendon snapped, the same words kept coming into my mind: Move the drill. I thought of those words that Sunday night, processing the injury. I thought of them when the pain woke me up Monday morning, and before I went into surgery on Tuesday. Move the drill.

In high school, in Wisconsin, I remember a teammate getting hurt in practice, and him lying on the field in the middle of a drill. The whole practice stopped. Everyone wanted to see how the guy was doing. When that happens in high school, when someone is hurt seriously, sometimes the practice just ends. But my first year at the University of Wisconsin, I remember a guy going down in practice— he was in pain, lying there on the field—and everybody stopped to look. After a couple of seconds, one of the coaches hollered, “Move the drill!”

We all moved 30 yards down the field and continued practice. I thought to myself, This is the most savage thing I’ve ever seen in my life! That was my welcome to big-time football. It was the day I learned: The train keeps going. I’m not the train; I’m a passenger.

When you’re one of the biggest guys on the team, you can think, I’m more of a train, not a passenger. But as much as people tell me they’ll miss me, the show goes on. They’re still playing. I’m not. It’s the thing players have the toughest time accepting.