'He had it all': DeMarcus Ware, Dwight Freeney, James Harrison commend Browns' Joe Thomas

When Joe Thomas and DeMarcus Ware first encountered each other after being elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it took them a split second to process they're now on the same team.

“We had this weird look like, 'Listen, dude, we don't have the pads on anymore,'” Ware said. “We actually just gave each other a huge smile because we knew like, 'Dude, we made it!'

“We don't have to go against each other anymore. We knew it was like Goliath and Goliath. It wasn't David and Goliath. It was just two dudes who were really good at what they did.”

While Thomas built a legacy with the Browns as a 10-time Pro Bowl and six-time first-team All-Pro left tackle, Ware, Dwight Freeney and James Harrison were among the best pass rushers the offensive lineman faced during his 11 NFL seasons.

And with Thomas set to be enshrined Saturday in Canton, the Beacon Journal spoke to Ware, Freeney and Harrison by phone about what set the Cleveland icon apart when they clashed with him in the trenches.

“Joe 100% was the best offensive tackle in the league in his era once [Baltimore Ravens Hall of Famer] Jonathan Ogden retired [after Thomas' rookie season in 2007],” Freeney said. “Jonathan Ogden was the best offensive tackle I've ever faced. He was just a mammoth of a guy. Once he retired, Joe dominated the conference, the division, the NFL from an offensive tackle standpoint.”

An Akron native and Pittsburgh Steelers legend, Harrison puts Thomas at No. 1 among the offensive tackles he played.

“Joe was at the top for sure," Harrison said. "I faced Ogden, but I faced Ogden in his latter years, so I didn't get prime Ogden. There were a couple other guys, but when it came down to it, I saw Joe twice a year, and that was one of the guys, if not the guy, that was the hardest to get around for me.”

Thomas and Ware are two of nine Class of 2023 inductees who will be immortalized this weekend. They're also two of five modern-era players who were voted into the Hall of Fame earlier this year.

Thomas, 38, is a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Ware received the nod in his second year of eligibility.

Freeney and Harrison reached the level of finalist and semifinalist, respectively, but fell short of induction in their first years of eligibility.

What Hall of Fame left tackle Joe Thomas said about facing DeMarcus Ware, Dwight Freeney and James Harrison during Browns playing days

Thomas offered assessments of Ware and Freeney in 2012 ahead of Cleveland playing Ware's Dallas Cowboys and Freeney's Indianapolis Colts. The Browns lost both games.

“Everything he does is phenomenal," Thomas said of Ware. "He's the type of guy that you try to keep quiet, but you can't shut him down no matter what you do for a whole game."

"He's probably the most dominant pass rusher in the last 10 years," Thomas said of Freeney. "Since he's been in the league, I can't think of another guy who's been able to produce the amount of sacks that he has. He still can get to the quarterback, even in his 11th year."

Thomas knew Harrison the best of the bunch, meeting with him and the AFC North rival Steelers twice a season for nearly his entire career. A Coventry High School graduate and Kent State product, Harrison went 19-4 against the Browns.

"He's an extremely strong, physical, quick outside linebacker, and he's been in the league a number of years, so he's very savvy," Thomas said of Harrison in 2011. "He's a shorter outside linebacker, which sometimes makes it a little bit more difficult because he's got the leverage on most players.

"He's been one of the best, if not the best outside linebacker, across the board — run and pass. He was the [NFL] Defensive Player of the Year [in 2008], and I think that kind of says it all."

DeMarcus Ware explains how the football intelligence of Cleveland Browns legend Joe Thomas made him a different type of challenge

Ware, 40, played for the Cowboys (2005-13) and Denver Broncos (2014-16), amassed 138.5 sacks in 178 regular-season games and earned nine Pro Bowl and four first-team All-Pro selections.

In Ware's two games against the Browns, he tallied 1.5 sacks — both against Thomas — eight tackles, including one for loss, and went 2-0. Ware also forced a fumble on one of the sacks.

“With Joe, I knew that he was going to be the most fundamentally sound tackle that I was going to go against but also one of the quickest,” Ware said. “Usually, when you think about a fundamentally sound guy that's quick, those two things don't go together. Usually, he gets you with his set point or he's smarter than you and the guy is not that athletic. But Joe, he had it all.

“I knew that I had to outsmart him. I couldn't like outpower him. I couldn't jump off the ball faster than he could. I actually had to use the chess match and say, 'What's in your toolbox this year that you probably haven't done to just see if he can block it?' Usually, I'd go into a game with maybe three moves. With him, I would have about six. Some of them I knew I couldn't do well, but I knew I just had to play a mind game with him to win that game.”

Dwight Freeney crushed the Cleveland Browns, but his elite production slowed a bit after Joe Thomas became a part of the equation

Freeney, 43, played for the Colts (2002-12), San Diego Chargers (2013-14), Arizona Cardinals (2015), Atlanta Falcons (2016), Seattle Seahawks (2017) and Detroit Lions (2017). He registered 125.5 sacks in 218 regular-season games to go along with 47 forced fumbles and garnered seven Pro Bowl and three first-team All-Pro selections.

In Freeney's seven games against the Browns, he compiled eight sacks, four forced fumbles and 22 tackles, including 10 for loss. He went 6-1. However, three of those games occurred before the Browns drafted Thomas third overall out of the University of Wisconsin in 2007.

In Freeney's four games against the Browns with Thomas in the lineup, he had three strip-sacks, two of which happened during plays when Thomas was matched up against him.

“As an offensive tackle, you can dominate a guy on 30 snaps, and you give up one sack, and it's like you had a crappy game just because you gave one sack, which is ridiculous,” Freeney said.

Harrison, 45, recorded 84.5 sacks, 34 forced fumbles, nine fumble recoveries and eight interceptions in 193 regular-season games. He has five Pro Bowl and two first-team All-Pro nods attached to his name.

In Harrison's 23 games against the Browns, he collected 6.5 sacks, three forced fumbles, two interceptions, a fumble recovery and 106 tackles, including 12 for loss. He tallied three half sacks on plays during which he lined up against Thomas, but even a casual observer would conclude the quarterback held the ball way too long each time.

“He was very good with his feet, and he was able to withstand a bull rush,” Harrison said of Thomas. “That was something that made it more difficult for me to get around him. His biggest asset was just his ability to be able to still keep his power when he was doing pass sets.”

The few highlights Ware, Freeney and Harrison produced against Thomas were more than most pass rushers, a testament to their Hall of Fame-caliber resumes.

“You try to get prepared for an opponent to see how guys are beating that offensive tackle, so you can kind of prepare your moves or prepare yourself for what you're going to do against this particular guy,” Freeney said. “Well, none of that worked with Joe, because every time I turned on the film, Joe was dominating everybody I saw, and no one was doing anything [against him]. So it just became one of these games where I'm like, 'OK, well, clearly Joe's dominated everybody. So I've got to kind of figure it out on my own.'

“Joe was a big boy who could move his feet and who was wide and understood the game, and he was just a load. For me, it was just somebody that I had to figure out a way to deal with somehow, and it wasn't easy. Some guys I don't even think about — just go out and play. Joe, shoot, I've got to come up with a real game plan.”

Hall of Fame left tackle Walter Jones can relate to the matchups Cleveland Browns great Joe Thomas experienced in the NFL

Thomas played all 10,363 snaps of his career, establishing what's believed to be an unprecedented streak. He surrendered just 30 sacks in 6,680 pass-block snaps, according to ProFootballFocus.com.

“You have to understand that you've got to be able to run block and pass protect, and I think Joe did that at a very high level,” Hall of Fame left tackle Walter Jones, who played for the Seahawks from 1997-2008, told the Beacon Journal. “But I think in our era, it was more about protecting against those top pass rushers. Nowadays, you don't even see that as much as when we played.

“If you had a top-tier pass rusher, you went against that guy the whole entire game. Now these [defensive] guys are rotating and trying to find a mismatch. If you had a pass rusher, you went against that pass rusher the whole game. I'm not taking nothing away from these guys now, but I feel like we came in the era where it was all about the left tackle and the left tackle being dominant. So for [Thomas], I thought it was pretty amazing the things that he was able to do.”

Ware won a Super Bowl with the Broncos to end the 2015 season, and Freeney captured a ring with the Colts to finish the 2006 season. Peyton Manning was the starting quarterback on both of those championship teams. Harrison's two Super Bowl victories with the Steelers (2005 and 2008 seasons) featured Ben Roethlisberger at QB.

Thomas blocked for 20 starting quarterbacks, experienced just one winning season (10-6 as a Browns rookie in 2007) and never appeared in a playoff game before announcing his retirement in March 2018.

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“The only thing I feel bad about with Joe was that he was never on a contending team,” Freeney said.

In some ways, it makes the individual excellence Thomas displayed for more than a decade even more impressive.

Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. On Twitter: @ByNateUlrich.

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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: DeMarcus Ware, Dwight Freeney, James Harrison on Joe Thomas