“So a bag of footballs, and Danny Shelton.”
That was Joe Thomas’ initial reaction to learning that the Cleveland Browns had traded his former teammate along with a 2018 fifth-round pick to the New England Patriots last Saturday in exchange for a 2019 third-rounder.
Thomas, the future Hall of Fame left tackle who announced his retirement this week after 11 seasons, 10 Pro Bowls, seven first-team All-Pros and 10,363 consecutive snaps, would expound from there during Uninterrupted’s emergency “ThomaHawk Show” with ex-Browns and Patriots wideout Andrew Hawkins.
“Now, to me, when I see a trade like that when you hear a team has swapped essentially mid-round picks, that means they really didn’t want that player hardly at all,” Thomas said on the March 10 podcast, “and they weren’t even able to get like a sixth- or a fifth-round pick [outright] … Overall, to me, that signals that they feel like Danny was not a very good fit for the Browns.