Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Thomas has never been afraid to take on new challenges. He usually wins, and then moves on to the next one.
The 41-year old Thomas won All-America honors playing for the University of Wisconsin. He then was drafted on the first round by the Browns in 2007 and did not miss a single play at tackle for the next 10 seasons. He retired in 2018 and was enshrined in Canton in 2023.
After retirement, he worked as an analyst for NFL Network as one way to stay close to the game. A network assignment in Germany in 2022 exposed him to the Europe League of Football which had been established there a year earlier.
That introduction led Thomas (willingly) and wife Annie (reluctantly) to take their young kids out of school and move to Munich where he coached for one season.
Now the Thomas’s are back in the States and living on a 4,100 acre farm in Wisconsin where he is raising hundreds of cattle, with an increasing focus on Wagyu beef.
“I grew up outside of Milwaukee,” Thomas recalls, “ but did not grow up on a farm. I just had a passion for being outside. When I had the opportunity to go to the NFL, I said if there is one thing I want out of it is my own piece of dirt. I just want to have my own little farm.”
He purchased his “little farm” in 2012 while still playing. It was 2,100 acres and included five cows and a bull.
One other challenge he took on in retirement was slimming down after weighing more than 300 pounds with the Browns. He started paying close attention to nutrition with positive results.
“I worked to focus on my health and be more intentional about eating real food,” Thomas says. “I lost about 70 pounds when I retired and I thought ‘What a great way to also learn where my food came from.”
His success with his Hall of Fame Farms caught the attention of the White House. He recently attended an event there with Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in the Oval Office where President Trump signed two executive orders aimed at supporting U.S. ranchers.
Joe Thomas has had a whirlwind retirement these last eight years. However, any individual who played 10,363 consecutive snaps in the NFL as he did during his career is used to achieving goals, both professionally and personally.
We at NFL Alumni are not sure what lies ahead for Joe Thomas and his family. However, based on his accomplishments so far in life, we would expect him to succeed.
