Seahawks players react to Earl Thomas' cryptic retirement tweet after leg injury
The Seattle Seahawks nabbed a big victory over Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers on Sunday night, but they lost something much more valuable. All-Pro safety Earl Thomas left the game with a leg injury in the second quarter, which was later deemed to be a broken leg.
Head coach Pete Carroll says he doesn’t know exactly how long Thomas will be out, but he says it’ll be more than a month.
"He broke his leg tonight, so I don't know what that means, but it's always six weeks anyway," Carroll said. "I don't know how severe it is, but it's very unfortunate. He ran into Kam [Chancellor], and Kam's made of steel, so that's going to hurt, and it sure did."
During the game, while in the locker room, Thomas sent out a cryptic tweet. He suggested that he was considering retirement, which understandably sent Twitter into a frenzy.
Thomas missed his first NFL game last week against the Buccaneers, so the fact that he’s seemingly thinking about stepping away from the game after this injury is a bit worrisome and surprising. He’s one of the toughest players in the NFL, as evidenced by his iron man streak to start his career, and his teammates know that.
As a result, they don’t think he’s actually going to retire. It was more about the injury being an emotional one, and Thomas saying something he didn’t mean.
"We all talked to him. He's in good spirits," Richard Sherman said, via ESPN. "He's a strong-willed dude, so he'll be fine. All of us consider retirement just about every game. And when you get an injury like that, a lot of stuff goes through your mind.
"I would think it's a little bit of an exaggeration."
Chancellor echoed a similar sentiment.
"When you get injured, it becomes very emotional," Chancellor said. "Sometimes you say things you might not mean. Sometimes you say things you might mean. It's one of those things you just have to let him sit back and breathe, let him sit back and go through his process.
"People are going to take it how they're going to take it. At the end of the day, he's going to make the decision he wants to make; but right now, it's an emotional battle at this moment."
Russell Wilson heaped praise on the All-Pro, saying he’s one of the greatest safeties of all time, despite this being just his seventh season.
"You lose one of the best safeties to ever play the game, in my opinion," Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson said. "It's a devastating thing for him and for all of us. But at the end of the day somebody's got to step up."
Thomas’ injury is crushing for the Seahawks, much like Rob Gronkowski’s is for the Patriots. Without No. 29 roaming the middle of the field, the Seahawks’ secondary will look very different.
