Best thing about Earl Thomas is Seahawks no longer need him
By Lee Vowell
When Earl Thomas left via free agency after 2018, he left the Seahawks defense a lesser unit. But now, Seattle doesn’t even need the free safety.
Besides what I have written the last few days, I do think Earl Thomas was a great player for the Seattle Seahawks. In fact. Thomas should be a future Hall of Famer. Maybe he leaves teams with the proverbial bad tastes in their mouths, but he probably made the Seahawks and Ravens better defenses.
But thanks to Seahawks general manager John Schneider’s ability to create the black magic, the Seahawks secondary in 2020 already looks beastly. Earl Thomas need not apply. Sure, Thomas fit well in Seattle’s defense in the 2010s and he is skilled, but he is looking for work now and Seattle doesn’t need him because Schneider has remade the secondary.
Forget the cornerback group for Seattle because Quinton Dunbar and Shaquill Griffin on paper are really good. Plus, maybe Tre Flowers bounces back from a late-2019 badness to be really good.
The Seahawks current safety group
Seattle’s safety group consists of free safety Quandre Diggs (a Pro Bowl alternate), strong safety – or whatever the heck he wants to be – Jamal Adams (a two-time First-Team All-Pro) and Marquise Blair (who has one year of experience but has the potential to be really good and versatile).
Are Diggs and Adams the same as Thomas and Kam Chancellor were? While the normal 12s reaction to which safety-tandem is better than Thomas and Chancellor is to answer “Have you ever watched football?” The 2020 Seahawks answer might be, “Possibly, yes.”
Adams is better than Chancellor and Chancellor was great. But Adams is a bit both Chancellor and Thomas. Diggs isn’t as good as Thomas was when he was young but he isn’t that far off. And Blair adds a quality element of depth to the safety group that Thomas and Chancellor never had.
Next. 4 Seahawks that could be traded before the season. dark
My point is that while Earl Thomas is currently a free agent and he would likely not be welcomed back with the Seahawks after the way he left the field in 2018, Seattle is better now than when he left. That means great things for Seattle in 2020 and it means Earl Thomas has one less team wanting to sign him.