Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Hall of Famer Joe Thomas talks Bears center Drew Dalman's retirement

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Mark Grote were joined by Hall of Fame offensive tackle Joe Thomas to react to Bears center Drew Dalman’s surprising decision to retire from the NFL at 27 years old.

Let's go to our score hotline. He also joins us on Twitch. Twitch.tv slash the score Chicago. The Hall of Famer, the 10-year offensive linemen for the Cleveland Browns, six-time first team, all-pro, 10-time Pro Bowl, part of the all-decade team. The accolades go on and on. Joe Thomas, thank you for joining us today. Hey, thanks for having me on, guys.

Well, thank you. And I think you're a perfect person to talk to when it came to just this sudden announcement of the retirement of Drew Dalman. I said this just a couple minutes ago to my co-host Mark Joe that for all the understanding of football we do, for all the research, I think until you've ever played

NFL football as a lineman, we can't fully grasp even with description how hard it is on your body day in and day out. How would you do that for us if you could? It's a beating. I mean, I retired after 11 years. I didn't miss a single play until my

11th season, but that was all she wrote. because by the time I'd finished 10 and a half years in the NFL, I was sliding down the stairs on my butt because I couldn't walk after games. My knees hurt so bad. They were so swollen. I was getting injections every week and getting my knee drained. It's a beating, even if you're not getting the big injuries, which I was able to avoid for 10 and a half years,

and I didn't miss any time. You're still accumulating wear and tear and beatings on the body and the mind. And it beats you down. And really, like, mentally I was in probably a worse space than I was physically by the end of my career. Because dealing with all the rehab and the wondering if you're going to be healthy enough to play on the weekend and trying to make up for lost practice time because you're injured, it wears on you. Because it's a stressful game as it is when you're a young player. Not to mention when you get old and you're trying to deal with, can my body keep up with these young bucks? Oh, and by the way, I'm older.

and I'm dealing with some injuries. I'm dealing with some inadequacies because my body just isn't the way it used to be. So I totally understand it's hard for people to really wrap their minds around a guy who's so young in his 20s just signed with the Chicago Bears to retire. But everybody's body ages differently. And it's hard to know what that beating was unless you're actually living inside of that person. So what is your first reaction then when you hear, you see the news that Drew Dalman, as you just pointed out, 27. I mean, and you mentioned it. You play 10 plus years in this league.

He's younger. Three years, $42 million. First reaction when you read that. I was surprised. I mean, it is very young, especially when you are just signing with a new team like he did last year with the Bears. You would expect that like if a guy's going to retire, you're going to hear some whispers about, you know,

he's thinking about it. He's dealing well off-season surgeries and he's struggling to come back. But really, it was all quiet. on that front. I think it probably surprised the bears almost as much as anybody. So it was definitely a shock. And Joe, I think you were probably the last generation of kids who grew up playing football without the concussion settlement that it happened with the NFL. I think that had come out probably when you were actually in your NFL career at that point. And I do think there was a wave of parents, you know, who said they were going to do things differently when it came

to having their kids play like Pop Warner, for example, or playing high school football a little bit differently. I can understand why that would be top of mind for any NFL player, just the danger of what this game can do to your brain day in and day out, knowing that earlier in their career and having that understanding for so long. What do you think? Yeah, it's definitely something that guys think about. One of my good friends from Wisconsin, Chris Borland,

he played one year, had an amazing season with the San Francisco 49ers. as a linebacker and he decided to walk away because he didn't feel like it was worth risking the health of his brain and possible long-term repercussions of the daily beatings that you take when you're a lineman, when you're a linebacker, when you're one of those positions that as a requirement of your job, you are smashing your skull against another human being 60, 70 times during practice, not just on the games. And so it's something that you definitely consider. I think they've done a great job of making the game safer. But when you're thinking about the brain, you only get one of them. Last time I checked, they're not doing brain replacements. And I think that's something that people have to think about. And I think the reason you maybe see it a little bit more now with guys retiring early versus we didn't see it as much a while ago is they're making a lot more money. So a guy like Doug or some of these other guys who retired early, in four or five years, they're making what NFL players 10, 15 years ago would have taken 20 years to make.

So it's a little bit easier decision when you've already feel like you've got yourself set up for life. And at that point, you're just playing for the love of the game. I think that cost-benefit analysis changes a little bit when you're not doing it because you have to pay those bills like guys that were playing 20, 30 years ago had to consider. And obviously, Joe, everybody cares about the person. We're being careful to some degree, too, because we don't know the why here of Drew Dalman. I'm sure the Bears know more than we know, but the other part is, is the reality the Bears no longer have a Pro Bowl center

who it sure looked to us like was hugely important to the Bears this year. What kind of a loss is Drew Dalman from what you saw watching the Bears? Well, I think it's a huge loss because Drew was the center of that offensive line. And when you've got a young quarterback who's learning a new system, like Caleb, who's coming into his own, had a really good year last season. like that is the guy you lean on. He is the translator between quarterback and the rest of the offensive linemen. And so that position is something that the quarterback leans on.

And that's something that the guards and the tackles lean on because Drew is that guy who translates Chinese that may be coming out of the quarterback's mouth to English that the offensive linemen are speaking. When that defense moves and they ship from a four down to a three down, they drive safeties down, they rock safeties back. They change where those linebackers are. there's constant communication that has to happen, and it has to happen in a split second. And so for Drew at center, he needs to know what Caleb is thinking. He's in every single meeting with the quarterbacks when they're talking about protections. They have their own meetings a couple times a week so that they can get on the same page because a lot of times your quarterback is looking at the secondary.

He's looking at the coverage, and it's the center that's looking at the protection. And so at some point during the play, the quarterback's not looking at that protection anymore, and he's trusting the center to be able to make any adjustments or changes to protect him and his well-being and safety. And so that trust is not something that you just sign up for. That's something that's built during training camp. It's built during the battles that you go through on Sundays. And it's not a position that's easy to replace. It's one of those positions.

If you don't know anything about it, it's usually a good thing. If you start hearing about it, you know there's a problem. And that is something that only time can fix when you're talking about that quarterback center. relationship. Oh, that's so true. We are talking to the Hall of Famer Joe Thomas here in Rahimi Harrison Grotie, the All-Pro, many-time All-Pro, all-decade, Brown's offensive tackle for many years. And he joins us on Twitch, twitch.tv slash the score Chicago from your shop where I see you have like a million point antlers behind you, by the way. That's some nice work out of you. So that's a treat for everybody watching on Twitch. And I also want to ask you this, Joe, having done this for as long

you have, having been an analyst of the game the way you are. Oh, we get the, oh my goodness, look at the multi-point box over there. Okay, so as we admire the taxidermy of Joe Thomas's shop, yeah, absolutely. So I do want to ask you this, because you are somebody who I think brought a lot of like modern stats to the conversation when it came to how to measure, you know, offensive line efficiency and things like that. If you were a general manager and you were looking for a center, what would be the qualities you would look for first? I think the first quality you got to have in any center is they got to be really smart. Because as I mentioned before, they need to be the guy that translates and that the quarterback trusts.

He is the voice for the offensive line. He's the guy that makes sure everybody's on the same page. And it's something that's not the hardest responsibility of an offensive lineman, but it might be the most important. And so you've got to find somebody who's very smart, especially running a complex system like the Bears do. they're going to be changing not only protections before the snap comes, but a lot of run blocking assignments because they're running pinpole. If they're running some of the outside zone concepts, play actions, they have to count for nine guys out there, right?

If a safety comes down to the strong side, now they have to count him and to be able to have a blocker for that player. And so those are all things that are really challenging. They have to happen very quickly. And that's the first thing that I want out of any of my centers. And then the second thing is I need to have a good action. athlete, a guy that can get out and run. He can reach a nose guard if they're running zones. You can get out and pull if they're run pinpoles and crack G type concepts. He's got to be able to run.

You get a lot of help when you're in the center, which is the nice thing because you got a guard on either side of you. So in pass protection, you're rarely in a one-on-one matchup. But you need to be able to run. You need to be able to find linebackers and safeties in space and block them, especially in the bear system, which is always going to rely heavily on a really, really, strong ground game. All of that said about the center, Joe, you may or may not know the Bears do have an opening at left tackle right now as well. Which position center or left tackle for the Bears and Caleb Williams is more important

right now. More resources should be used at. I would say you're going to want to use more resources on tackle because it requires a lot more draft capital or dollars in the salary cap to pay a quality tackle. And if you can't block the edges in past protection, it doesn't matter if you've got all the guys assigned to the right protection, you're not going to be able to be very efficient and very effective protecting for your quarterback. So tackle is still the hardest thing to get. And it's still something you want to spend your most money on. Says the tackle, a likely story.

Joe, thank you so much for joining us. And you can check out Hall of Fame Beef by Joe Thomas. Yeah. This is a pretty impressive list of what you got. here, Joe, 100% full-blood Wagyu, F-1 American Wagyu, and Premium Angus Beef proudly raised in Wisconsin's Driftless Region by Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Thomas. You can visit Hall of Famebeef.com. Joe, I have to admit, I didn't know about the driftless region of Wisconsin. You should come visit.

It's beautiful. It's not quite like the Rocky Mountains, but it's absolutely gorgeous. The last glacier period didn't come through here, so we got amazing trout streams. We got unbelievable wildlife. We got beautiful bluffs and hills. It's a great place to vacation. That's why I first got here.

And then it's also a great place to raise some of the healthiest, highest quality beef on planet Earth. You mentioned the Wagyu. We're selling all those steaks, all those cuts, beef jerky, Hall of Fame beef sticks, summer sausage, hot dogs, cheddar worst, brats, you name it, anything of beef cow has. We can provide it at Hall of Famebeef.com. Cheddar worst. Fantastic. That sounds good, man. That's our worst is off the chain.

My kids won't even look at a regular hot dog anymore. And I've got something else to do, which is check that out. Joe, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me on guys. Anytime. Thanks, Joe. That's Joe Thomas, Hall of Famebeef.com for all of that. And I learned a geography lesson today.

I've been meaning to ski in Wisconsin. I was a stupid head and started skiing in Colorado. Same. Nevada first. To this day, I don't think I could ski because I started. I went from Colorado to, Utah, which is another. Utah is tricky. The snow

can get icy. We've got to go up to this driftless region. Gros. There's no drifts. No drifts whatsoever. We got to check it out. What does that mean? Driftless region. That's the thing. That's why I want to look this up. Okay. Curiosity is good. All right. Thanks again to Joe Thomas for joining us. We're going to do more

on just, I think, listening to what he had to say and kind of absorbing that. So we'll do that together as a team with you next.