Joe Thuney: Four Super Bowls, One Historic Award, and the Guard Everyone Overlooked
Three weeks into his first season with the Chicago Bears, Joe Thuney quietly told reporters he’d already decided to sign an extension. The team hadn’t formally offered one yet. He’d just seen enough.
From Centerville, Ohio to the NFL – Without Much Fanfare
Thuney was born November 18, 1992, in Centerville, Ohio, and attended Archbishop Alter High School, where he won two Division IV state championships and was voted Greater Catholic League Lineman of the Year as a senior. He also ran his class as president, which tells you something about how he’s always operated – quietly in charge.
At NC State, he started games at four of the five positions on the offensive line before settling at left tackle his senior year. In 2015, playing left tackle in ACC competition, he didn’t allow a single sack across 589 pass-protection snaps. The program hadn’t produced a first-team All-American offensive lineman since Jim Ritcher won the Outland Trophy in 1979. Thuney ended that drought.
He graduated cum laude in three years. Later earned an MBA from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. And when he took the Wonderlic at the NFL Combine, he reportedly answered enough questions to seem competent and intentionally stopped short of showing how smart he actually was. Whether that story is true or just good myth-building, it fits the profile: a guy who does more than the job requires and tries not to make it obvious.
New England Patriots: Three Straight Super Bowls, Starting Every Game
The Patriots selected Thuney in the third round of the 2016 draft, 78th overall. Bill Belichick’s staff had him starting at left guard by Week 1 and he didn’t come off the field – he logged more snaps than any New England player that entire regular season. The PFWA named him to the All-Rookie Team. Then he went to the Super Bowl.
Super Bowl LI. Super Bowl LII. Super Bowl LIII. Three consecutive appearances, starting every game of each. No player in NFL history had ever done that to begin a career. LI ended with a 34-28 overtime win over Atlanta. LII was the loss to Philadelphia, 41-33, the one where Nick Foles caught a touchdown pass and the Patriots couldn’t stop anything. LIII was the 13-3 defensive stranglehold over the Rams, the game where Thuney spent sixty minutes blocking Aaron Donald – the Defensive Player of the Year – and the Rams finished with zero sacks.
He started all 16 regular season games in each of his first five NFL seasons. Never missed one. By 2019 he’d earned second-team All-Pro recognition and the Patriots placed the franchise tag on him in March 2020, buying themselves one more year before the obvious happened: he was going to get paid elsewhere.
Kansas City Chiefs: Two More Rings, First All-Pro Selections
Five years, $80 million. That’s what Kansas City paid in March 2021 to pull Thuney away from New England. He slid into the left guard spot next to Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith, and the Chiefs promptly built one of the better interior offensive lines in the AFC.
Super Bowl LVII, February 2023: the Chiefs defeated the Eagles 38-35. Philadelphia’s defense – one of the best in football that year – didn’t record a sack. Thuney was a primary reason. He was named first-team All-Pro after the 2023 season, his most individually decorated year to that point, and made the Pro Bowl in each of the three seasons from 2022 through 2024.
The 2023 postseason went sideways in the divisional round against Buffalo. Thuney tore his pectoral. He was considered a long shot to play in Super Bowl LVIII and ultimately didn’t. The Chiefs won anyway. That’s three rings now – two with New England, one with Kansas City – and by the start of 2024 he was lining up at left tackle after D.J. Humphries went down, protecting Patrick Mahomes’ blind side with a week of preparation at a position he hadn’t regularly played since college.
Super Bowl LIX, February 2025: the Eagles won 40-22. Thuney allowed seven pressures and a sack, his worst postseason performance by PFF’s accounting. Kansas City traded him to Chicago six weeks later for a fourth-round pick.
What His PFF Numbers Actually Show
In the 2025 season with Chicago, Thuney played 1,149 offensive snaps – every game, full workload – and finished with an 88.6 pass-blocking grade from Pro Football Focus, first among all 81 qualified offensive guards in the NFL. His overall grade of 79.4 ranked fifth at the position. Run-blocking grade: 71.0, which landed 19th. He allowed 15 total pressures, zero sacks, one hit, and drew two penalties all year.
The pass-blocking number is what separates him. Most elite guards grade well in run blocking – that’s scheme-dependent and easier to manufacture with good play-calling. Pass protection at 88.6, leading the entire position group across 1,149 snaps, means edge rushers and interior pass rushers spent the 2025 season running into a wall. The Bears’ offensive line allowed 24 sacks in 2025. The year before Thuney arrived, that number was 68.
Forty-four fewer sacks. One trade, one fourth-round pick. General manager Ryan Poles either got lucky or knew exactly what he was doing.
The Bears Rebuild and the Protector of the Year Award
Poles didn’t just get Thuney. He also signed center Drew Dalman from Atlanta and acquired right guard Jonah Jackson from the Rams, essentially replacing three interior starters in one offseason. The idea was to build a real line around Caleb Williams, who in his rookie year had taken a beating behind one of the NFL’s worst units.
Thuney knew it early. He said in May 2025, a few weeks after joining the team, that he could tell this was somewhere he wanted to stay. “As the days rolled into weeks, you realize this is a special place,” he told the Bears’ official site. He signed the two-year, $35 million extension before the season started.
At NFL Honors in February 2026, the league handed out the inaugural Protector of the Year Award – a new honor recognizing the top offensive lineman in football, selected by a committee of NFL legends through peer evaluation. Thuney won it. His speech was short. He thanked his line mates. He mentioned Dalman and Jackson by name. He looked more relieved than triumphant, which is probably the right reaction when you’ve been doing this for nine years and someone finally built an award category around what you do.
The Bears also won the NFL Moment of the Year award that night, for a walk-off overtime touchdown against Green Bay. Two awards in one night for a franchise that spent most of the previous decade as a cautionary tale.
His Contract With Chicago, Broken Down
The two-year extension signed in May 2025 runs through the 2027 season. Total value: $35 million. Average annual salary: $17.5 million. Signing bonus: $15 million. Guaranteed money: $33.5 million – meaning almost all of it is protected. In 2026 his base salary is $16 million with a $500,000 workout bonus, carrying a cap hit of $21.5 million and a dead cap value of $26 million.
For context: his Chiefs deal in 2021 averaged $16 million per year. This extension is essentially flat on annual value but comes with far higher guarantees. He’ll be 35 when it expires. The Bears know what they’re paying for – not upside, but certainty. A guard who has started 167 consecutive games (including playoffs) and hasn’t had a major injury since the pectoral in January 2024 is exactly what a young quarterback needs next to him.
How He Actually Plays – What Makes Him Different
Thuney is primarily a pass protector. His footwork is the thing scouts mention first – unusually quick lateral movement for a 301-pound man, which lets him mirror speed rushers without lunging or overcommitting. He almost never gets caught flat-footed on a stunt or a twist. In Super Bowl LIII he spent three hours playing next to a center and a right guard who were both good, but the reason Aaron Donald finished with zero impact plays wasn’t scheme – it was Thuney refusing to give him a clean angle.
His run-blocking is solid but not dominant, which is the honest part of his profile that often gets glossed over. That 71.0 run-blocking grade in 2025 – 19th at the position – isn’t bad, but it’s not the reason you pay him $17.5 million a year. You pay him to keep defenders off the quarterback. In that, over nine seasons, he’s been close to perfect.
He’s also versatile in a way most guards aren’t. He’s started regular-season games at left guard, left tackle, and center in the NFL. In 2020 with New England, he moved to center mid-game when David Andrews went down on IR. In 2024 with Kansas City, he shifted to left tackle for an extended stretch late in the season. Most guards who try to play tackle at age 31 look uncomfortable. Thuney looked like someone who’d been doing it for years, which – technically – he had, back at NC State.
Career Achievements and Where He Stands Historically
Four Super Bowl rings. Two with New England (LI, LIII), two with Kansas City (LVII, and he was on the roster for LViii even though he didn’t play). Six AFC Championship Game appearances across nine seasons. Four AP All-Pro selections: second-team in 2019 and 2022, first-team in 2023 and 2024. Three consecutive Pro Bowl selections (2022, 2023, 2024). The inaugural NFL Protector of the Year in 2026. The NC State Football Ring of Honor, also in 2026.
The historic record that still stands: first player in NFL history to start in the Super Bowl in each of his first three seasons. He matched it, almost improbably, with three consecutive Super Bowl starts again from 2022 through 2024 with the Chiefs. Six total Super Bowl starts. He’s been in twelve.
For the Hall of Fame conversation – and it’s starting – the case rests on a combination of team success, individual honors, and longevity that very few offensive linemen in the modern era can match. The counterargument is that he spent most of his career on dynasties that would have been excellent regardless, and one All-Pro selection before age 31 is a thin individual résumé for Canton. The first-team All-Pros in 2023 and 2024, plus the Protector of the Year, change the calculus somewhat. Whether two more seasons in Chicago add enough is genuinely uncertain – not because of his ability, but because offensive linemen need a decade of dominance to get serious consideration, and the committee tends to make them wait.
The Person Off the Field
He grew up the second of four children – brother Eric, sisters Monica and Megan – in a Catholic family in suburban Dayton. His father Mike and mother Beth. He attended Incarnation Catholic School before Archbishop Alter, where he played basketball well enough to start two years and lead his conference in rebounding. Football was always the plan, but he wasn’t narrow about it.
The academic record is real, not just resume padding. Graduating cum laude from NC State in three years while playing major-college football is not standard. Earning an MBA from Indiana’s Kelley School after that suggests someone who actually likes learning, not just someone collecting credentials. In an interview on the Bears’ official channel, he mentioned seeing LeBron James play in high school and listed his favorite travel destinations. He comes across as a person who has interests outside the building, which in NFL culture is rarer than it sounds.
When the Bears signed Garrett Bradbury in 2026, Bradbury – a former Patriot – pointedly mentioned the Patriots moving on from Thuney in 2021 as a mistake. Thuney didn’t comment. He rarely does.
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