Isaiah
Thomas.
Isaiah
Thomas.
Oklahoma· 6'5"· 266 lb· 4.70s 40
"A long-armed Tulsa native who produced sixteen and a half sacks in two Oklahoma seasons, sacked Joe Burrow as a rookie, and then spent three years cycling through practice squads in Cleveland, Detroit and Cincinnati."Pre-draft read
A long, heavy-handed defensive end who wins with length before he wins with speed. Thomas is nearly six-five with 33 1/4-inch arms and a 6-foot-7 3/4 wingspan, and the best reps on his Oklahoma tape are the ones where he extends into a tackle's chest, locks out and discards him late. Twenty-three bench reps is real functional strength.
What he does not have is a first step that scares anybody. A 4.70 forty and a 1.66 ten-yard split at 266 pounds put him behind the athletic curve for the position, and the pass-rush plan is built on power and a long-arm rather than a bend that turns the corner. He is stout against the run and useful on stunts, but a tackle who sets fast can keep him on the perimeter all afternoon.
A four-man front that uses him as a heavy base end on early downs and slides him inside on passing downs to rush against guards.
Year 1: run-down rotational end and special teams body. Ceiling: a two-down starter who gives 400 snaps of power against the run.
A speed-rush defense that asks its ends to win the edge in isolation, because he has neither the get-off nor the bend to do it.
The best version of him is an inside-out rusher on a deep line, not a player asked to beat left tackles alone.
Oklahoma DE Isaiah Thomas Highlights, 2022 NFL Draft
Pre-draft cut of the long-arm power rush that produced 16.5 sacks in two years.
Isaiah Thomas vs Oklahoma State 2020
Full-game cut-up from the breakout junior season.
Isaiah Thomas highlights
Short reel of his Oklahoma disruption plays.
Thomas grew up in Tulsa and played at Memorial High School before staying in state for Oklahoma, where he arrived in 2017 and redshirted. The next two seasons were quiet: nine games and four tackles as a freshman in 2018, then 11 games in 2019 with seven tackles, two tackles for loss and his first two college sacks as a rotational piece on a Big 12 championship defense.
The junior year changed his trajectory. In the pandemic-shortened 2020 season he played 11 games and posted 32 tackles, 13 tackles for loss, 8.5 sacks, two pass breakups, two fumble recoveries and a forced fumble, earning second-team All-Big 12 honors as Oklahoma's most disruptive interior-to-edge rusher. Nothing in the first two years suggested that was coming.
He returned for a senior season and repeated it: 12 games, 38 tackles, 12 tackles for loss, eight sacks, four breakups, three forced fumbles and a second straight second-team All-Big 12 selection. His career finished at 43 games, 81 tackles, 27 tackles for loss and 18.5 sacks, with 17 of those sacks coming in his last two years. Evaluators liked the production and the frame and flagged the same limitation everyone saw on tape: the athletic testing did not support a full-time edge role.
- 01
Two straight seasons of double-digit tackles for loss
13 in 2020 and 12 in 2021, with 16.5 sacks across the two years combined.
- 02
Length and functional power
33 1/4-inch arms, a 6-foot-7 3/4 wingspan and 23 bench reps that let him long-arm tackles off his frame.
- 03
Two-time second-team All-Big 12
conference recognition in both of his full seasons as a starter at Oklahoma.
- 04
Takeaway production for a lineman
four forced fumbles and three recoveries in college, including three forced fumbles as a senior.
- 05
Position flexibility inside and out
Oklahoma moved him along the line, and he holds up as a heavy end in run defense.
- 01
Below-average explosiveness for the position
a 4.70 forty, 1.66 ten-yard split and 31.5-inch vertical at 266 pounds.
- 02
No bend around the corner
he cannot flatten to the quarterback, so the rush is a power plan or nothing at all.
- 03
Late bloomer with two productive years
the first two seasons produced 11 tackles total, which shortens the evaluation sample.
- 04
Struggles against quick-setting tackles
once his long-arm is neutralized he has no secondary move to fall back on.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.70sp50
- Vertical
- 31.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 117inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Oklahoma | 9 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2019 | Oklahoma | 11 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Oklahoma | 11 | 32 | 8.5 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| 2021 | Oklahoma | 12 | 38 | 8 | 0 | 4 | 3 |
| Career | — | 43 | 81 | 18.5 | 0 | 7 | 4 |
Season lines follow Sports Reference, which includes bowl games in every year and whose four seasons sum exactly to the career totals shown: 43 games, 81 tackles, 27 tackles for loss, 18.5 sacks, seven pass breakups and four forced fumbles. Totals that exclude bowl games run lower, which is why other databases list 17.5 career sacks over 32 games. Zeros in the 2018 and 2019 lines are verified absences in that table, not placeholders. He redshirted in 2017, so no row exists for that season. Fumble recoveries (three in his career, two in 2020 and one in 2021) are tracked by the same source but omitted from the season rows here.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Long Browns defensive end whose role settled as a rotational run-down piece.
Power-based edge rusher without elite testing who produced when a scheme protected his weaknesses.
Productive college pass rusher whose athletic limits ended his NFL run after a handful of games.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Cleveland took him 223rd and gave him real rookie snaps. Thomas debuted in Week 4 against Atlanta, and by Week 7 at Baltimore he had two tackles, two assists, a pass breakup and a fumble recovery after Justice Hill put the ball on the ground. A week later against Cincinnati he added another breakup and his first career sack, a 10-yard loss on Joe Burrow on third down. It was the high point.
After that the roster math never worked. The Browns waived him on August 29, 2023, re-signed him to the practice squad, brought him back on a reserve/future deal in January 2024 and cut him for good on August 26, 2024. Cincinnati signed him to its practice squad three days later, Detroit pulled him onto the active roster on October 15 before waiving him on November 9 and releasing him in December, and the Bengals took him back on December 18 and promoted him five days later. Cincinnati waived him at the 2025 cuts and released him from the practice squad on September 9. Twelve career tackles, one sack, two breakups and two fumble recoveries is the whole file.