“Done with Seattle”? Holdout Earl Thomas is helping his replacement, Tedric Thompson, from afar
To many, Earl Thomas is the Pacific Northwest’s biggest villain right now.
The three-time All-Pro safety officially began his holdout Thursday by skipping the first day of Seahawks training camp. To his many critics, that’s a betrayal. A betrayal of his contract, which still has this year remaining on it. Of his team. Of his fans.
Even to (almost) always-sunny Pete Carroll, Earl Thomas is at the very least now an issue. Carroll sounded somewhat betrayed and annoyed following Thursday’s camp opening. The only coach the 29-year-old Thomas has had in the NFL said upon being asked of his star’s absence: “He should be here. And he’s not...
“It’s unfortunate.”
Yet to Tedric Thompson, Earl Thomas is a saint.
The 23-year-old understudy used to watch and idolize Thomas on television from his home south of Los Angeles a few years ago. He used to have Thomas playing on his NFL video game at home. Now Thompson has perhaps the most thankless job in Seattle sports: as the inexperienced replacement for the six-time Pro Bowl safety and likely future Hall of Fame inductee. Thompson is suddenly the central man in a new “Legion of Whom” secondary that has Seahawks fans wondering—fearing—what will become of their defense and team this year.
Thompson, the team’s fourth-round draft choice from Colorado in 2017, says he and Thomas remain in regular contact. The kid and the icon he looks up to as a “big brother” last traded text messages a couple weeks ago, when Thomas knew he wasn’t showing up for the start of training camp.
Thomas has this winter, spring and summer skipped all Seahawks activities and piled up what as of Thursday evening was more than $124,000 in potential fines, and counting. He’s vowed to stay away until he gets a new, rich contract extension beyond his deal that ends this year.
Turns out, Thomas has also spent a chunk of that time helping Thompson take his place—now, or eventually.
“Earl is really like my big brother. He is really like my big homie,” Thompson said Thursday in a quiet, empty hallway outside the Seahawks’ locker room. “I can call him today and send him some stuff on (practice) film and ask him questions, and he will hit me up. The same thing with Kam (Chancellor, Seattle’s star strong safety who went on the reserve/physically-unable-to-perform list Thursday and won’t play again). If I’ve got a question off the top of my head I can text either one of them.
“Me and ET watch film together. ... The biggest thing he’s told me is to watch where my threats (from the offense) are. Know if I’ve got help or if I don’t have help. Know who’s the speed receiver. Know formations, tendencies. There’s so much stuff that ET has taught me...he’s helped me translate what he sees on the film. It’s helped me so much.
“I talked to E a couple weeks ago, right before camp started.”
So, no, Thomas is not away trying to torpedo the Seahawks’ rebound season or sabotage Thompson’s attempt to play his position. And it appears he’s not “done with Seattle,” as an unsubstantiated report out of Thomas’ native Texas said this week. Thomas’ agent has since debunked that assessment as simply not true.
“E a good dude, man. E a real, REAL good dude,” Thompson said, his eyes widening and voice full of respect. “There is nothing negative about him. He’s a real Godly man; he puts God before anything.
“He’s a good dude. I’ve got a lot of respect for him.”
Still, he’s not here. For that reason alone, how different was day one of the 2018 Seahawks training camp compared to the previous half-dozen summers?
Instead of Thomas, waived-to-San Francisco Richard Sherman and Chancellor as the starters in the secondary of a dominant defense coming off consecutive playoff appearances and Super Bowls, it was Thompson next to strong safety Bradley McDougald, with Shaquill Griffin at left cornerback and Byron Maxwell at right cornerback on Thursday.
None of those guys were in those spots to begin last season, when Seattle missed the playoffs for the first time in six years.
“I knew there were three Hall of Famers in the room when I first got here,” Thompson said of the Seahawks’ defensive-backs meetings in 2017. “One day they are all going to have gold jackets.”
No wonder All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner, who has publicly supported what Thomas is trying to do, said Thursday when asked about Thomas’ holdout: “We have to focus on who’s here, because we’ve got a lot to prove.”
As Thursday’s first practice of camp showed, Thompson’s got some work to do to turn Thomas’ lessons from afar into perfection on the field. Not to mention he’s got enormous cleats to fill at free safety.
Midway through the team scrimmage, Thompson and McDougald were one in front of the other before the snap in the back of the defense, identifying receivers each was responsible for against Seattle’s starting offense. It’s the communication and pre-snap read Thomas has been doing flawlessly since he became a starter back there in his rookie season as the 14th-overall choice in the 2010 draft.
Running back C.J. Prosise ran down the left sideline after the snap. Thompson ran up toward the line of scrimmage, then looked and hesitated. Prosise sprinted past him and every other defender, all alone down the sideline. Russell Wilson’s pass hit him in stride for an easy, 30-yard gain. McDougald was at least three seconds late getting over to Prosise in trying to make up for Thompson’s apparently missed assignment.
McDougald looked at Thompson from far down the field. Thompson bent at the waist. He grabbed his helmet with both hands. A few plays later while on the sideline watching the reserves, Pro Bowl linebacker K.J. Wright, one of the few remaining stars on Seattle’s defense, walked over to Thompson shaking his head, not in anger so much as in disappointment. Wright is unaccustomed to the Seahawks’ defense giving up such a freebie big play over a blown assignment behind him.
Carroll said the Seahawks are likely to alternate at free and strong safety in the starting defense while Thomas holds out. McDougald showed last season in his Seattle debut year he can start at either spot. Carroll said former Los Angeles Rams starter Maurice Alexander, recovering from an offseason shoulder injury, or Delano Hill, another 2017 draft choice equally as unproven as Thompson, could be the first-team strong safety in the days to come, with McDougald at free safety.
“We’re going to do some rotating to see these guys,” Carroll said. “The competition is on.”
And Thompson’s learning goes on. On the field. In the Seahawks’ meetings rooms. And on his smart phone with Thomas, far away from here.
What helps Thompson is Seattle’s is often the same single-high-safety defense he played at the University of Colorado through the 2016 season. With two future NFL cornerbacks Chidobe Awuzie and Akhello Witherspoon flanking him, Thompson played the entire deep center of the field in roving coverage for the Buffaloes, similar schematically to what Thomas has been doing for eight seasons for Seattle.
Thompson, who chose CU over Minnesota and Fresno State because it was the only Pac-12 school that offered him a scholarship, also showed at Colorado the ability to play tight man coverage inside on slot receivers. It’s that kind of versatility that attracted the Seahawks to draft him.
The man who would take Thomas’ place as key center fielder in Seattle’s changed defense was raised in Inglewood, Calif., by a single mother who birthed his older brother Cedric when she was 15, Tedric when she was 17 and their younger sister when Mom was 19. Flossie has been a public bus driver for the Los Angeles suburb of Culver City for 18 years. Tedric’s brother played college football at Minnesota before the Miami Dolphins drafted him in the fifth round in 2015. Cedric was out of the NFL by the summer of 2017 and is now married with a daughter.
While in her 20s Tedric’s mother made sure her three kids got to and from school each day while she went to work, either by dropping them off at their grandmother’s house or coordinating grandma to take them to school or practices for sports after it.
“She always put us before herself,” Thompson said.
Every day, Tedric calls his mother and his younger sister, Cedrinae, who is about to turn 21. And on FaceTime, too, so they can see as well as talk to each other.
“I’ve got a close relationship with my mom and my sister in California,” he said.
“My mom was, up until my sixth grade, a single parent. So my mom is my biggest motivator. She had us young...I can go on and on about my mom.
“And my little sister, that’s like one of my best friends. We talk about everything. Having them in my corner, my circle, that’s always going to keep me motivated.”
Especially now. Thompson is trying to do what no one in Seattle has had to think about doing since Jim Mora (remember him?) was the Seahawks’ coach: play safety without Earl Thomas around.
This is Thompson’s time.
Just don’t tell him that.
“I don’t really look at it like that,” he said. “I’ve always been the type of person that in football, when I walk into the meeting room I am going to do whatever they tell me to do, to the best of my abilities.
“First string, second string, third string, I never really let that get to me. I don’t look at it as my time. I just have to go out there and compete. That’s the biggest thing in the program. So that’s what I’m looking forward to.”
This story was originally published July 26, 2018 at 5:57 PM.