Earl Thomas clearly shows why Seahawks wanted more for him than a second round pick

Not all first round picks become Seahawks legends

The 2000 NFL draft featured some pretty great players. Shaun Alexander was one of them. Yet there’s only one Hall of Famer, Brian Urlacher. For every Alexander, there’s a guy like fellow Seahawks first round pick Chris McIntosh. His career lasted just 24 games. The average number of career games played by the first round picks of 2000 is 113.

Subtract Seabass’s ridiculous 217 career games and the average drops to 108 games. That’s six seasons, plus eleven and a half games. I guess our average first rounder will have to retire at half-time. Hey, it’s a trend!

Point being, the average first round pick is nothing close to Khalil Mack. He is nowhere near the value of Earl Thomas. The approximate career value of all the first rounders is about 52 points. I’ll go into the math behind that another time. For now, just trust all the good people of pro-football-reference.com.

For some context, Alexander’s career approximate value is 79 points. Urlacher’s is the highest among the class of 2000 at 150. So far, Mack has totaled 48 points in four seasons. Earl Thomas has 83 in eight seasons, and is playing his best football right now.

Mack is a lot younger, and that is a huge factor, of course. Not too long ago, I wrote about Thomas’s age, and his projected future value. It’s absolutely true, not many safeties have a lot of great seasons after the age of thirty. But the ones who do were already great. Seems obvious, right?