As an Umpire, Thomas stands behind the offense and focuses on pre-snap movement and then, largely, the offensive line on every play to look for infractions. The muck in the trenches can be difficult to distinguish, but Thomas has an advantage: He’s been out there in the NFL and he knows what to look for. He knows all the tricks of the trade.<\/p>\n
“I can read what’s happening and I think that helps me, but you still have to make the right call and you have to be in position to make the right call,” he said. “Just like a player, you want to get better and better each and every game. That’s what I’m trying to do.”<\/p>\n
And just like the players and the coaches, Thomas and the officials will watch video of the practice after the game and assess their performance. There is a very direct goal in mind.<\/p>\n
“I love what I’m doing at the college level,” he said. “It’s great. But, sure, I want to be in the NFL someday as an official and having these practices is important for us, too.<\/p>\n
“You know, I was never one to say much to the officials when I played and, really, the guys don’t say a whole lot. They might remind you to watch something extra close, but we’re already doing that. I understand what the players are going through because I was there with them. Shoot, just like them, I want to have great practices. I want to be perfect.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As an Umpire, Thomas stands behind the offense and focuses on pre-snap movement and then, largely, the offensive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":976385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[123190,5588,25,7,6,910,4206,242,109,2476,128279,8896],"class_list":["post-976384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia-eagles","tag-2026-training-camp","tag-alumni","tag-eagles","tag-football","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-com-feature","tag-on-the-inside","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-eagles","tag-philadelphiaeagles","tag-pre-2026-week-2-patriots","tag-training-camp"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117115709259644376","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/976385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}