NFL’s Julius Thomas Reveals Why “It’s So Easy” After Portland State

Julius Thomas is a household name in the NFL these days. But the Denver Broncos’ star tight end didn’t return to football until his senior year at Portland State.

Four years into his career, he was caught yelling, “It’s so easy!” after catching a Peyton Manning touchdown against the New York Jets this month. But today he explains why it’s never been so easy on Derek Jeter’s new website, The Players’ Tribune.

[quote align=’right’]”To hell with the playbook, to hell with the pads — it took me months just to develop the hip flexibility I needed to get into a proper stance.”[/quote]“I’m the guy who ‘came out of nowhere,’” he wrote. “I’m the guy who everybody ‘slept on.’ But I’ll be the first to tell you that there was a good reason people were sleeping on me. Not that long ago, I was a joke. When I first started playing college football in 2010, the last word I would use to describe the sport for me was ‘easy.’”

Thomas was named a contributing editor in his piece for Jeter’s website, dubbed “a new media platform that will present the unfiltered voices of professional athletes, bringing fans closer to the games they love than ever before.”

Thomas reveals how hard it was for him to get back into football since he hadn’t played since his freshman year of high school. Though he played four years of basketball for the Vikings, he touches on a wide range of topics from the difficulties of reading defensive schemes to even learning a three point stance.

“To hell with the playbook, to hell with the pads — it took me months just to develop the hip flexibility I needed to get into a proper stance,” he wrote. “To put this in perspective, my current teammate, Emmanuel Sanders, was starting a Super Bowl season for the Steelers while I was just trying not to fall over in a three-point stance. We’re almost the same age.”

Read his entire essay at The Players’ Tribune.