Entering the NFL as an undrafted free agent isn’t easy. In 2022, the Dallas Cowboys gave an unselected safety a chance and the player grabbed the opportunity.
Juanyeh Thomas played college football for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. After not being selected in the 2021 Draft, Dallas decided to give the safety a shot the following year.
He will be entering his second season in the league, but his story until he actually made the squad was a hard-fought one.
As soon as he joined the team, Thomas began to feel the pressure straight away.
Indirectly, he offered advice and explained how it felt to come to the NFL as an undrafted free agent on The 8th Round podcast.
“It’s going to get pretty dark, and you’re going to think that you aren’t useful to the team, but I’m telling you, a lot of things happen, man, and when your number’s called you’ve got to go take that, for real,” he advised. “Stay focused and stay locked in the whole time.”
During the 2022 preseason, Thomas believed he was doing well, but ended up being left out of the 53-man roster. He spent the entire season on the practice squad.
“It was kind of like a punch to the gut,” he claimed. “I feel like that was really humbling. Then throughout the whole year, I was just – I’m not going to lie- I was in a dark place.”
On the one occasion when he thought he would be included in the active squad for the first time, he suffered a knee injury and his hopes were ruined – and also postponed.
In the safety’s mind, the injury was all the organisation needed to send him home.
“When you’re on practice squad, it’s in the title: you’re there to practice. And when you can’t practice, it’s kind of scary. Like, okay, if I get back healthy, are they going to cut me?”
We already know that the outcome was positive, because he’s still a Cowboy.
The young talent, already processing the idea that the Cowboys were going to let him go, was told by his coaches that he had done “too many good things to be cut”.
That was all he needed to turn things around in 2023.
His first reward came from Mike McCarthy. The head coach said he was the player who had shown the most improvement over the year.
“That made me feel good but I couldn’t even look at it and relax, because we had a loaded safety room,” Thomas said. “I just had to keep making plays to separate myself.”
In his only game as a starter, the 23-year-old managed a feat that is well remembered among the team.
In Week 1, against the New York Giants, Thomas blocked an opponent’s field goal that was returned for a touchdown for Dallas – the first score of the game.
The major issue America’s Teams has faced in recent seasons is the difficulty of stopping the running game. Thomas addressed this topic on the podcast and made a guarantee to Cowboys Nation.
“If there’s one thing I’m going to tell the fans it’s that we are going to stop the mother [expletive] run. That’s all I’ve got to say. We’re gonna fix it.”
He also made a comment about how the 2024 season needs to be handled: “This season is do-or-die for everybody.”
Apparently, much of the squad thinks so too.
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