Playing Dallas carries extra meaning for Seahawks’ Earl Thomas

Earl Thomas considers it a big deal every time he steps onto a football field. It will be an especially big deal when the Seahawks play the Cowboys, the team Thomas rooted for while growing up in Texas.

BY BRADY HENDERSON

Oct 29, 2015, 2:16 PM Updated: 3:10 pm

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Earl Thomas said his hat is off to Cardinals safety Tyrann Mathieu for his record-setting contract. (AP)

(AP)

RENTON – So important is football to Earl Thomas’ life that he considers it a big deal every time he steps onto a field. It will be an especially big deal to Seattle’s free safety when the Seahawks play the Cowboys, the team Thomas rooted for while growing up in Texas in the 90s.
Thomas, 26, is still a fan of the Cowboys, in fact.

“Of course,” he said Wednesday.

Sunday’s game will mark the fourth time in Thomas’ career that he’s played the team he grew up rooting for. Seattle faced the Cowboys in Dallas in 2011 then at CenturyLink Field in 2012 and 2014. He called it “a dream” to do so.

“It doesn’t feel real,” he said, “but it’s here, it’s happening.”

Thomas is from Orange, which is the easternmost city in Texas, sitting right on the Louisiana border. Asked about his earliest memory of rooting for Dallas, Thomas recalled watching an instructional video that featured Cowboys stars Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Deion Sanders, “back when they had like the Daisy Dukes shorts, real small, like the coaching shorts back in the day. It was just like a basic position video, and it showed me little drills that they did.”

Thomas looked up to Smith, who at 5 foot 9 is the NFL’s all-time leading rusher.

“Yeah, because he was very short but he was very tough,” Thomas said.