Earlier this week, former defensive lineman for the Colorado Buffaloes, Tawfiq Thomas, who now plays for the Yellow Jackets, stirred the pot this week by posting Colorado’s loss to Georgia Tech with a sharp caption aimed at Shedeur Sanders. That led to an outburst from the Buffaloes’ faithful, with Colorado alum Matt Chesney firing back at Thomas.

The former offensive lineman went off on Tawfiq Thomas on his Zero 2 Sixty podcast. McChesney found the post completely disrespectful and called it “weak,” and said Thomas doesn’t have an ounce of decency or sportsmanship. He told his listeners that he is incredibly glad Thomas is no longer in Boulder playing for Coach Prime. According to McChesney, this stunt just proves that Thomas couldn’t handle the pressure or hack it with the Buffaloes, which is why he packed his bags for Atlanta. There were many talks that he left the Buffs for money.

Within three days of posting the episode, Tawfiq Thomas came forward and set the record straight on why he left Boulder. “You don’t know the whole story,” Thomas said on Darius Sanders’ YouTube channel. “You think you know some? Don’t believe what you see on Twitter. You know, some guys is paid to do certain stuff to, you know, make them or whoever they work with look good, but you don’t don’t don’t believe what you see on Twitter.”

Thomas felt he had been treated unfairly after being suddenly benched without any explanation whatsoever. Apart from recording 30 tackles and a sack during his two-year stint with the Buffaloes, Thomas played 95 snaps in four games last season, then saw his role shrink before an injury ended his year early.

Thomas had previously expressed immense confidence and suggested he was healthy enough to compete. However, Sanders and the coaching staff’s decision to keep him off the field went beyond a simple injury recovery. He was subsequently stripped of his starting role early in the season. The sudden demotion, to him, felt like an unfair and isolating punishment.

Even though he tried his best to stay positive and support his teammates from the sidelines, sitting out was an incredibly brutal mental challenge that he still thinks about today. Thomas confessed he “almost crashed out” on the sidelines. For a player who expected to help anchor the front, watching from the sideline felt like being pushed out of his own story.

During that difficult stretch, he felt isolated, leading to the biggest lesson he took away from his time at Colorado: “No one’s coming to save you.” He appeared in just four games last season. Once the year ended, Thomas didn’t waste much time entering the transfer portal.

Apparently, Thomas views this painful experience as a life lesson that forced him to grow up fast. He explained that the benching taught him a lot about himself, how to read the people around him, and how to spot “the BS” in the college football world.

Thomas claims his controversial social media post was coming from a place of surviving a really tough situation. This new perspective sets up a movie for the big rematch between Colorado and Georgia Tech on Thursday, September 3.