There have been countless stories about Tom Brady and his iconic career. But just when you thought you had heard it all, Joe Thomas shared an eye-opening revelation about his fellow NFL legend.

On a podcast, Thomas recounted a game when he and the Cleveland Browns absorbed a beating from Brady and the New England Patriots in 2016. He admitted that it gave him a giant-sized reality check.

“I f****** hated Tom Brady, as everybody did in the league. I hated the Patriots. I just wanted to smash him so bad. We lost like 30 to 0. I remember sitting in the car after the game, and I was crying. I had ice on both elbows and knees. I was in pain, my wife was driving, and I was looking out the window. It was that moment when I realized I'd been fooling myself for a while, and we were not going to win no matter what I did,” said Thomas on “Bussin' With The Boys.”

Joe Thomas says he cried after playing a perfect game in a 30 point loss to Tom Brady and realized he had spent 10 years fooling himself into believing the Browns were a Super Bowl team before each season

“The way I entered every season was like, if I need to get the most out of… pic.twitter.com/i9ksUFXIby

— dank (@cptdankkk) September 15, 2026

His memory was a little hazy. The Browns actually lost “only” by 20 points, 33-13, in Week 5. Brady threw 28-of-40 for 406 yards, three touchdowns, and zero interceptions.

While Thomas remembered the score wrong, he was accurate about the hard lesson he learned, acknowledging that it was a “bad feeling.”

“She (wife) finally said, ‘Are you okay? Did you have a bad game?' Then the tears really came because I said, ‘I played a perfect game, and we lost by 30.' It really sank in at that moment that you don't control the situation anymore. That feeling of loss of control is really hard,” added the eight-time All-Pro and 10-time Pro Bowler.

Thomas never tasted the playoffs during his 11-year career from 2007 to 2017. It was part of the long postseason drought that began in 2003 and lasted until 2019.

Meanwhile, Brady and the Patriots dominated the era, winning five titles in eight appearances in the Super Bowl in the same span. Brady retired as a seven-time champion.