This time six years ago, Thomas Evans was trying to carve out a job protecting Aaron Rodgers.
Now, he’s looking to become the World’s Strongest Man after an incredible change in sporting direction.
Evans, a standout guard for the University of Richmond, was picked up by the Green Bay Packers as an undrafted free agent in 2017. He made it through the entire pre-season before just missing out on the final 53-man roster in the last round of cuts.
Growing up, Evans dreamed of playing receiver, then tight end before eventually making his way down to the offensive line as he bulked out and grew into his tall frame. Football was his first love, but his passion for lifting weights has now taken him in an entirely different direction.
“I was usually bigger and stronger than most of the guys,” he recalls. “And they kept moving me down to offensive line where I wasn’t able to touch the ball!
“That was my first love, football, for sure. I played all the way from when I was 13 through college, at the University of Richmond. I was a two-time captain there, started on offensive line and we made it pretty far in the play-offs a couple of years in a row.
“I’m super proud of my college career. Had the NFL opportunity and things didn’t quite work out how I wanted. I definitely felt like I had potential to play a long career, maybe not right away, maybe starting on a practice squad, kind of thing.
“But things kind of fell apart, nothing came through.”
When his football dream fell apart, Evans found himself with plenty of free time to consider what to do next. A browse of Netflix saw him stumble across Born Strong, a documentary following legendary strongmen Eddie Hall, Hafthor Bjornsson, Brian Shaw and Zydrunas Savickas.
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As he searched for something to fill the competitive void left by the end of his football career, Evans had a lightbulb moment and decided strongman was the perfect next move.
“I always knew about strongman, and I was always pretty much the strongest football player around, especially in college,” he says.
“I knew I wanted to compete - maybe it was powerlifting, maybe strongman, maybe trying rugby at a recreational level. I knew I wanted to do something to keep active.
“I loved lifting weights and I hated running. Although I later I found out in strongman you do have to run sometimes, just with a bus or something on your back!
“When I was cut in September ’17, it was actually about the same time Born Strong was put on Netflix. I watched that, figured it was something I could do.
“I watched all these guys lifting all these weights and I thought, ‘I could do that, I can get there’ and started with big goals.”
Whilst he started with lofty ambitions, Evans quickly realised how much work he had to do after his first regional competition in Delaware in April 2019. However, he has made rapid progress to earn a late call-up to the prestigious World’s Strongest Man, taking place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina between April 19 and April 23.
“Once I got into the regionals I was like, ‘OK, this is humbling’, right off the bat,” Evans recalls. "I finished third in my first competition out of five people.
“Then goals and expectations have kind of grown every year, it feels like, to me, really quick. When I started, I never thought I’d get this far. All of a sudden, we’re in the biggest show with the biggest guys.
“It’s super exciting and super humbling. I’m on record as saying last year I wanted to make it to World’s Strongest Man in three to four years, then it all kind of fell into place and the cards fell into order with some good opportunities and some luck.
“It’s a very humbling experience, and I’m just super excited to have the opportunity.”
Despite having a basis of strength from his football career, moving to strongman has seen Evans completely change his routine and also adapt to an individual sport after growing up in the team environment.
“There was definitely a big difference between the team aspect in football to an individual effort in strongman,” he explains. “I still look at it as a team sport because of how many people have helped me get to this point, and I see myself as representing them out on the floor.
“But at the end of the day, if I fail, it’s on me. If I make an execution error or whatever it is, there’s nobody else to blame out there.
“In football, you can get frustrated sometimes because you might be the hardest working guy but that’s not always the case with all your teammates, so there’s positives and negatives there.”
The day to day routine of training to be the World’s Strongest Man is also entirely different to being in the NFL.
He explains: “Offensive lineman are going to spend like two-three hours watching film, just studying tape and your opponent, going over plays, a lot of Xs and Os.
“After that you probably practice for max two hours, then lifting, you don’t lift every day, obviously. You’d lift maybe an hour at most, three to four times per week and it’s not all heavy lifting.
“A lot is mobility and flexibility training, which is still important in strongman, but especially at the NFL level, those guys aren’t lifting big weights as much as you may think.
“What my strongman regime looks like is I’ll spend a good 45 minutes as my warm-up with my prehab work, I mix those together and spend probably a lot more time than most strongmen warming up and preparing my body.
“Depending on the day, the training session will last anywhere from three to four hours. A lot more rest in between but trying to move a lot more weights.
“It’s more focusing on hitting your event, hitting your single body movement then you completely exhaust that body part. If it’s legs and push, you’re going to completely exhaust your legs.
“In football, a lot of it is total body and we can’t exhaust you completely because you need to use your legs tomorrow, whereas in strongman the next day might be just upper body so I don’t need my legs to be ready to go the next day. Basically, lifting is practice.”
There’s also the matter of diet, which is a big aspect of fuelling as much muscle growth to build strength as possible whilst maintaining a degree of mobility needed for certain events. It has seen Evans jump around 18kgs since making the switch, hitting a weight of around 163kg ahead of World’s Strongest Man.
“I was playing football anywhere from 315lbs to 325lbs (142-147kg) in college,” he says “Obviously there’s much more conditioning, a different conditioning aspect. I don’t think there were many good guys above 340lbs in the NFL and if they were, they could still do that power repeat.
“In football, you have to go really hard for 3-7 seconds, then get 25 seconds to recover, then go really hard for 3-7 seconds again. In strongman, you might have to go really hard for a minute or more, but then you get a really long break before you have to repeat that effort.
“Now I’m weighing around 360lbs. A lot of strongmen are down kind of in that more athletic range, the 320 range, but I like to think I move reasonably well for a 360lb person.
“With that, I’m eating a lot more meals a day. Football was definitely the traditional three meals a day, snacks when you can, but it was always easy for me to eat and gain weight. Some guys struggle with it, but it’s not a problem for me. I could eat all day if they let me.
“I’m more conscious in strongman because playing football, the running, being outside in the heat, your weight can take care of itself as long as you can move at those higher speeds.
“In strongman, we’re so focused on the static strength for some events that it’s necessary to put on some more mass, but you can’t overdo it because all of a sudden we’re doing a loading race and if you can’t load the implement and run well, you’re not going to do as well in the whole comp.
“I’ve really tried to approach strongman as being as general as I can. Instead of trying to be really good at one thing, being decent at as many events as I can.”
In terms of his strength gains, his numbers have gone through the roof despite the fact he was already one of football’s strongest players.
“We didn’t do deadlifts in college or the NFL, it was really power cleans, but I’ve always been pretty decent at those. I did 425lbs (192kg) in college, and when I started strongman, deadlifting, I wasn’t pulling much over 650lbs (295kg), now we’re puling 850lbs (385kg) plus.
“Squatting, in college I was capped at 700lbs (317kg), because the football coach was like, ‘we’re not putting 700lbs on your back’. Now, I’ve hit 700lbs for three sets of five.
“I’m really hoping for a max squat event, so I need everyone to spread the word that squatting events are cool and we need to see more max squats! I think I could throw up above 900lbs (408kg) in a proper suit and everything.
“Bench press in college, I did 525lbs (238kg), and that’s probably the event that’s suffered because I’m starting to do a lot more overhead. But I’ve hit a 435lbs (197kg) log, so that’s 100 less pounds going from the ground to overhead rather than just the casual bench press.
“At the Shaw Classic in August we’ll see where my bench press numbers are at with the standing chest press event.”
As he prepares for his biggest competition to date, Evans has had chance to reflect on the rapid strides he has made since his life changed direction from football to strongman. Whilst World’s Strongest Man is a major milestone in his journey, he is determined to ensure he makes many more appearances in the future and becomes one of the recognisable figures of the sport.
“I want to be a household name in strongman,” he concludes. “I want to be one of the guys you think of.
“I don’t want to say just, ‘I want to win this show’ or ‘winning this many titles’, because I want there to be a longevity aspect.
“I don’t want to push my body to something crazy, win one event and then be done. I want to do it the right way, be able to repeat it and be one of those guys you see at all the big shows.”
