Gregg Bell
The News Tribune
Earl Thomas says he’s coming back—and says “the disrespect has been well noted and will not be forgotten.”
Posting on his Instagram account that “I’ve never let me teammates, city or fans down as long as I’ve lived and don’t plan on starting this weekend,” the All-Pro safety indicated Wednesday morning he will end his six-week holdout over wanting a rich, new contract and report to the Seahawks in time to play in Sunday’s season opener at Denver.
“I worked my whole life for this….. I’ve never let me teammates, city or fans down as long as I’ve lived and don’t plan on starting this weekend.” Thomas wrote online, hours before the Seahawks’ first full practice in preparation for the first regular-season game.
Expect Thomas will indeed play. A three-time All-Pro at minimum preparation is better for Seattle than the unknown of having Tedric Thompson as its free safety at Denver. Thompson, the Seahawks’ 2017 draft choice, backed up Thomas last season, played mainly on special teams and was set to start for Thomas to begin this season—until Wednesday.
Kam Chancellor reported on a Wednesday before a Sunday game in September 2015, ending his holdout in week three of that regular season, then played 40 of 50 defensive snaps against Chicago that weekend.
On a conference call Wednesday morning about an hour after Thomas declared he was coming back, coach Pete Carroll told Denver media he had met with Thomas. Asked if Thomas will play this weekend against the Broncos Carroll said, “I don’t know what shape he’s in, all that kind of stuff. We’ll figure it out.”
Carroll has said for months he knows Thomas would remain ultra prepared and in shape, ready to step in immediately upon his eventual return.
For Thomas, pride and principle apparently has a maximum cost. And it was about to get really expensive.
Thomas stood to begin losing game checks of $500,000 per weekend if he does not report in time to be on the active roster for the opening game, that is, 24 hours before Sunday’s 1:25 p.m. Pacific Time kickoff in Denver. He has amassed about $2 million in team fines by missing all of training camp, all four preseason games through August plus Seattle’s three-day, mandatory minicamp in June.
Precedent from Chancellor’s holdout into the 2015 regular season suggested the Seahawks are going to collect from Thomas this time, too. But NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported Wednesday the Seahawks “did agree to wipe away almost all of his fines, source said.”
“With that being said, the disrespect has been well noted and will not be forgotten,” the 29-year-old Thomas wrote Wednesday. “Father Time may have an undefeated record but best believe I plan on taking him into triple overtime when it comes to my career.”
Thomas has publicly demanded the Seahawks either give him the top-of-the-market contract extension beyond his current deal ending after the 2018 season, or trade him.
The Seahawks did neither.
They and general manager John Schneider have stood their ground of not wanting to re-up with Thomas at $13 million per year with $40 million guaranteed. That’s what Thomas’ draft classmate and safety Eric Berry got from Kansas City last summer, when Thomas said “there ain’t never enough of that.” Such a deal would run until Thomas was 33 or 34 years old, after the team would prorate his rich signing bonus across four or five years for salary-cap management.
Meanwhile multiple NFL teams, most prominently Thomas’ home-state Dallas Cowboys, have not come close in meeting the Seahawks’ demands for a first-round draft choice, another high-round pick and perhaps a veteran player. Schneider and Seattle have stood on the premise they have a future Hall-of-Fame talent under contract for this season, and they didn’t have to do anything short of another team backing up a Brinks truck of enticements to move off that position.
In December, following a Seahawks win at Dallas, Thomas famously went to the Cowboys’ locker room and told coach Jason Garrett to “when Seattle kicks me to the curb come get me.”
Thing is, Thomas eventually had to come back. He knew it. The Seahawks knew it.
And that galls him all the more.
Not only would he be losing $500,000 per game in checks on his $8.5 million salary in the final season of the $40 million extension he signed with Seattle in 2014 to become the league’s highest-paid safety then. Thomas’ contract year in 2018 would not count if he didn’t return before week 10 of this season. In that scenario he wouldn’t have become a free agent in March, not free to get the money in the open market he feels he deserves.
So now he’s back, to prove again what he’s worth. And he’s made it clear to the Seahawks he’s not happy about it.
At this point the relationship between Thomas and the only NFL team he’s known, the Seahawks, Schneider and Carroll who drafted him in the first round in 2010, seems irreparable. And Carroll has a mammoth coaching challenge: keeping Thomas’ anger and feeling disrespected from affecting the locker room.
Even with Wednesday’s news, all signs continue point the way they have for months: Thomas staying angry, playing out the final season of his contract, and becoming a free agent to sign elsewhere in March.
