University of Wisconsin’s Joe Thomas was fast learner on offense, defense

CLEVELAND, Ohio – In 2003, Joe Thomas arrived at the scenic campus nestled along Lake Mendota in Madison, a city of 250,000. For a fisherman, the water beckoned. But where he would make his mark would be inside the venerable Camp Randall.

Joe Thomas, who will be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday, Aug. 5, is the subject of a new book by Marc Bona and Dan Murphy based on interviews with Thomas’ family, friends, teammates and Thomas himself. In this excerpt, the third of five, Joe enters the University of Wisconsin.

One of the nation’s oldest football stadiums, Camp Randall remains an electrifying and historic place to watch a college football game.

The highly recruited Thomas came in with a long list of preseason pats on the back. Every college football analyst had him somewhere on their lists of rated prospects. Most players at Division I schools have some sort of a resume, but Thomas was lauded mostly for his play on the defensive side in high school yet here he was about to line up on offense. The player he shared the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association 2002 Defensive Player of the Year honors with — Justin Ostrowski — also landed in Madison that fall.

“We kind of knew he was coming,” quarterback John Stocco said. “He had been racking up accolades in both track and football. And so I think most guys were aware that this guy can be pretty good.”

Thomas had grown up a fan of the Badgers, though without cable TV in the family home he hadn’t watched them much on television. Thomas, though, didn’t wear his resume on his sleeve when he took to the practice field as a college freshman. He was honest about his learning curve.

“The first day (in pads) I had a lot of trouble,” he told Mike Lucas, who covered Wisconsin for The Capital Times and who would go on to become radio color commentator for Wisconsin games. “Obviously the speed is so much faster. You’re used to a guy being here. Instead, he’s 2 yards past that. Obviously, I want to get bigger and stronger — I’m between 275 and 280. I have enough confidence that I think I can play with anybody who’s coming up against me and that’s the most important thing.”

He learned fast.

On only the sixth day of practice Thomas took repetitions with the second team and a few with the first.

“He will be as good as he wants to be in his career,” head coach Barry Alvarez told Wisconsin State Journal writer Tom Mulhern. “I don’t think anyone’s disappointed in what they’ve seen. He’s a mature individual, he’s very smart, he picks things up, he absorbs it and he’s athletic enough to make corrections.”

Any possibility of redshirting Thomas was fading fast.

On the afternoon of Aug. 30, 2003, Thomas took to the field for his first college game, 675 miles away in Morgantown, West Virginia. More than 60,000 fans turned out for the nonconference game, which was close. Wisconsin used a late drive to pull out a 24-17 win after being down 10.

“The first couple of plays, I thought it was pretty neat to actually be playing in a game in college in front of so many people,” Mulhern quoted Thomas as saying. “After that, I settled down a little bit and did my job pretty well, hopefully. The biggest thing was I couldn’t even hear the quarterback’s snap count. I’m not used to that.”

Thomas often suited up as a blocking tight end in the Badgers’ jumbo package. That formation often brings an extra tight end as a blocker in lieu of a receiver. His versatility eventually would serve him well as the Badgers settled into the season.

Thomas was a college coach’s dream, since he played, and excelled at, multiple positions in high school. That would be a good thing because when the 7-5 Badgers accepted a bid to the Music City Bowl in Nashville against Auburn on Dec. 31, Thomas’ adaptability would serve the team well.

Who starts and who plays in college is determined by coaches evaluating who is having solid practices, of course. But a domino effect results from injuries to other players. On Nov. 22, 2003, defensive end Darius Jones went down with a knee injury in Wisconsin’s final regular-season game, a 27-21 loss to Iowa. That triggered the chain reaction that moved Thomas to defense.

Mulhern even reported that Thomas’ pals on the offensive line jokingly called him “a traitor since he moved to the defensive line earlier in bowl practice.” Center Donovan Raiola said, “We went out last night. We said, ‘Oh, you want to hang out with us again?’ ”

Good-natured razzing aside, it showed a lot about Thomas, a freshman. Mulhern noted the importance of the timing of Thomas being shifted to defense: “It’s amazing to think that Thomas, who had not played on the defensive line since high school . . . could move to a new position and in the span of bowl practices move into the starting job.”

Thomas wasn’t fazed by the transition of being a freshman moving from offense to defense just prior to a bowl game. He told the Wisconsin State Journal: “It’s a lot easier than offense. Learning the reads and the calls on the offensive line are so much more difficult than what you’re doing on defense, where you’re playing a reactionary position. Instincts help a lot. But there still are a lot of bad habits that I had in high school that I’m trying to correct.”

Auburn proved too much in the bowl game. Alvarez was denied his 100th victory at Wisconsin. On offense, the Tigers’ running game pushed through Wisconsin. On defense, Auburn pressured quarterback Jim Sorgi on the way to a 28-14 victory. Thomas was in on eight tackles.

But Thomas’s ability to shift to the other side of the line was not lost on Alvarez. “You’d like to have five Joe Thomases,” he told the Wisconsin State Journal.

With the team sputtering along a mediocre season during Thomas’ freshman year, Alvarez’s words rang of both truth and a little frustration. With the bowl loss, Wisconsin would finish 7-6 in 2003. But better things were on the horizon.

Excerpt copyright 2023 with publisher’s permission. “Joe Thomas: Not Your Average Joe” is by Marc Bona and Dan Murphy, published by Gray & Co., Cleveland. Available at Northeast Ohio bookstores and Amazon.

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