Earl Thomas turned in his third straight great performance of 2018 Sunday. Surely no one still thinks the Seahawks would trade him for a second round pick.
Earl Thomas is playing the best ball of his career so far. He has three interceptions in three games, and has broken up four additional pass receptions. At that pace, he’ll have 16 picks and 21 passes defended. His single season high marks are five interceptions and 11 passes defended. So, yeah, he’s having a pretty good year. Still think the Seahawks should have let him go for a second round pick?
Pro Football Focus ranks Thomas as the best safety in the league. That isn’t much of a surprise. What’s interesting is that according to their ranking system, they see Thomas as playing the best ball of his great career, too. He’s currently ranked at 93.0 points, and his best season to date was 2015. He graded out at 90.6 that year. I think they tend to undervalue Thomas and his ability to control so much of the field. When PFF ranks him this high, you know he’s en fuego!
That’s the long way of saying that Thomas is pretty good. In case you were interested, PFF grades Khalil Mack as the best edge defender. He’s graded at 91.1 points. That’s about his career average, which is ridiculously good. There’s a reason the Chicago Bears gave up two first round picks to get Mack. He’s worth it. And Khalil Mack is definitely germane to this story.
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Mack is worth two first rounders for the simple fact that he’s a known quantity. That’s indisputable, once you look at the numbers. I’m not saying Mack is Lawrence Taylor, but through their first four seasons, Mack is ahead in career sacks 40.5 to 37.5. Yes, that includes Taylor’s 9.5 “unofficial” sacks in his rookie year. I’m not saying Mack is as good as Taylor, but so far, he’s on the path to a Hall of Fame career. Here’s the thing: the average first round pick is nowhere close to a Hall of Fame career. I’ll go in-depth on this in another article, but here is just one example.
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?
Thomas is too valuable for the Seahawks to move for a pick
Earl Thomas will likely be another player to have great seasons after 29. Since we’re talking about the Seahawks trading Thomas now in his age 29 season, the cream of the crop averaged about three top seasons from age 29 on. That’s defined as an approximate value of at least ten points by pro-football-reference.com. Thomas has averaged just under 11 points per 16 game season in his career, hitting 14 in both 2012 and 2013. He shows no signs of slowing, as we already noted.
So if Thomas plays at the level of the best safeties age 29 up – and there’s no reason to think he won’t – he’d provide between 30 and 45 points of approximate value over the next four seasons. That’s not as much as the average first round pick’s value, but remember that was over six and a half seasons. Over four seasons, the numbers could swing in the favor of Thomas. And don’t forget, more players like Courtney Brown and Ron Dayne get drafted than Alexander and Urlacher. You really want to trade Thomas for a second round pick? For a chance to draft Ike Charlton? No thanks; I’ll keep the Hall of Famer.
Thomas is the best player at his position in the league right now. So please tell me how it makes any sense for the Seahawks to trade that value away for anything less than a first round pick. Personally, I wouldn’t do it even then. It only makes sense if the season goes in the tank and Seattle has nothing to play for. For a player like Khalil Mack, of course you make the move. For now, Seattle is back on track, and you don’t trade the best player in the game for a roll of the dice.