Pete Carroll Show: It’s an ‘ongoing’ situation with Earl Thomas
Sep 24, 2018, 10:45 AM | Updated: 11:00 am
Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll hopped on 710 ESPN Seattle Monday morning to recap Seattle's win. (AP)
(AP)
Pete Carroll joined Brock Huard and Mike Salk on 710 ESPN Seattle Monday morning to recap the Seahawks’ 24-13 victory over the Dallas Cowboys.
O’Neil: What do Seahawks do with Earl Thomas after he crossed another line?
Sunday was one of Seattle’s best wins as a team since December of last year, but the biggest story coming out of the Week 3 match up surrounded off-the-field questions about safety Earl Thomas.
Thomas, who finished the game with a pair of interceptions, missed practice Friday for personal reasons and spoke openly postgame about his contract situation and trade comments from Dallas coaches.
710 ESPN Seattle’s Mike Salk asked Carroll whether a coach can let a player miss practice.
“Well, there’s always consequences now,” Carroll said, though he later added, “It’s a unique situation with a guy with really sincere concerns about his future, and I totally respect that and will continue to respect that and work at what it best and how things can come together for all of the right reasons.
“We love the way he plays and the person he is and the contributor he’s been,” Carroll continued. “There’s no slighting of that. He’s awesome and he’s shown it, which I think is so comical that he’s being so effective and he’s having a freaking blast playing. There’s two sides here and we’re just working it out. There’s the business side and there’s the ball side and we’re trying to figure out what’s best. It’s ongoing, and really sincerely ongoing. I want what’s best for Earl, and we’re trying to figure that out and how to work this out. And of course we want what’s best for the club. So we’re managing it.”
As far as what happened during the game, Carroll offered a few of his own takeaways. Here are some notes:
On the performance of safety Bradley McDougald (5 tackles, 1 pass defended, 1 forced fumble): “I’ve got to hand it to you, it seems like Bradley McDougald just keeps showing up. He’s all over the field. He’s doing a really good job. And the way we’re playing him now with him in the dime package has just made us better. It gets Tedric on the field and we get to move Earl to a number of spots… it’s just all good stuff.”
You mentioned the little things Russell Wilson did impacted the game. Can you give an example of when it specifically affected the game? “They had to call timeouts a couple times… because they weren’t ready for us, for our tempo. Russ had taken the tempo to them. The touchdown pass to J.B. (Jaron Brown), he’d taken the tempo to them and caught them where they just weren’t quite sharp on that play. There was no pass rush if you looked at it, and he sat back, took a good look to offset the safety and throw the seam right for the touchdown. It was gorgeous football right there and it was exactly orchestrated.”
We saw a lot of Chris Carson in this game. What’s he like? “He’s as quiet as you can possibly be. He doesn’t say a word. He’s just a quiet person. He’s tough as nails. You can see he had a lot of tough runs yesterday, he worked hard to get 100 yards now, you know 30-something carries to get 100, that was a tough day. But he demonstrated his consistent toughness throughout the game. His best run of the game was the last one for the first down, that was a great play… it’s not always going to be a 30-carry game, we’re not going to do that to him all the time, but this day it just seemed like it fit.”
On watching Kam Chancellor raise the 12th Man flag: “I sent him a note last night. I’ve watched a lot of those ceremonies… that one got me, man. It hit me right in the heart. I was emotional, I’m glad nobody saw that. I was all choked up about it. Just such a relationship with such a great kid and a great player, it’s not the player it’s really him, he’s up there going and giving it everything he’s got just like he always does. It was a beautiful thing.”
