Earl Thomas Gets Traded
I’m normally on the side of players when it comes to negotiations for contracts because the NFL business really screws players over (Just fucking pay Roquan, Bears, you fucks) but something about Earl Thomas’s fight with the Hawks seems very whiny and petty. It seems like ET just sorta gave up on Seattle and is throwing a fit so he can go somewhere else. Somewhere else heavily implied to be Dallas most of the time. Granted, that may be how the team PR is spinning it to make him look bad, but this feels more petty than someone like Aaron Donald or Le’Veon.
Donald and Le’Veon seem like they still want to play for their respective teams, they just want to be paid for it. It feels like it is about getting max value while they are worth it. Earl seems like he just wants out, like he hates Seattle now. He’s hinted at retirement threats a few times and now seems like he’s trying to force Seattle’s hand but he doesn’t actually hold any real leverage. Seattle is going through an overhaul and ET is a prime suspect to let go when it makes sense financially. Why restructure his contract when they probably want to let him walk next year regardless? If Thomas holds out all that does is cost him fines and stock for the future. The Hawks don’t have to do anything.
But there’s another thing I don’t think is getting mentioned. It seems like there might be something slightly rotten in Seattle. Basically the entire legion of boom has held out at some point, plus Michael Bennett too. Kam was unhappy with his contract a lot. Browner immediately left for greener pastures. Sherman made a fuss and then has since not been terribly kind to the Hawks in interviews. Earl Thomas, who seemed like the team glue, is clearly very unhappy. Bennett threw multiple contract fusses, though Bennett also seems like a douche. It feels like Seattle has had a suspicious amount of holdouts during their era. Is the player friendly atmosphere making them greedy or is the front office secretly kind of terrible? Seattle got so much love for the drafting that made them a brief superteam but they haven’t done nearly as well since and nobody really mentions that. I think Seattle got lucky just as much as they drafted well. The only one who hasn’t thrown a fuss is Russ, but Russ is a robot man incapable of doing anything that doesn’t toe the brand line.
Maybe I’m just being paranoid but something about Seattle seems…off. I blame Pete Carroll. Probably teaching everyone jet fuel can’t melt steel beams. He probably thinks the earth is flat too.
Also lmao at Kawhi Leonard being a whiny baby all season and then getting shipped to Toronto. Another player who didn’t seem to realize his lack of leverage. The Spurs seems very interested in making him happy but he just wanted to play with LeBron in LA and then discovered that wasn’t going to work out the way he wanted. He’ll probably go there next offseason but in the meantime we get to watch apathy Leonard as a Raptor. Good stuff.
EDIT: of course the day this goes live ET had a piece “explaining” it on the Players Tribune. I really do sympathize with how badly players get used by teams but it still feels petty to me. I also do not trust anything on the Player’s tribune (especially stuff like this) because it is very much not the player’s words here, it is a carefully translated PR version of the players words. Every article on The Players Tribune feels like it was written with the exact same voice by the exact same person. It’s calculated PR the same way team press conferences are. I suggest treating it with the same level of skepticism.
I want him back for his play, but I want him to go because of his behavior right now. Also the only time I remember him considering retirement was after he broke his leg, against the Panthers I think, two years ago
Also I have an idea for a comic. To keep the Seahawks theme rolling, Pete Carroll blowing a bubble that gets bigger after every note he checks on his notepad until it pops when he gets to actually getting o lineman (Duane Brown, now JR sweezy). I want to draw this, but I can’t draw stick figures correctly.
I don’t care if Earl comes back or not at this point. I’m done with childish holdouts. In any other job – you’d get fired for not doing your required work. Flat out.
Either come back or don’t. I’m done.
“In any other job”, if you think your compensation is less than you’re worth, you can shop your skills around to other companies. Then either go work for them, or make your current employer pay you better with the threat of leaving. No such option in the NFL. In the NFL, holding out is a player’s only option.
Thank you. Pro sports cannot be compared to your everyday office job directly like this, they don’t work the same way and it is not fair.
Even in the 4th year of a 4 year contract, he is still the #4 paid safety in the league in terms of cap hit, and 5th in terms of cash. At the time he signed it, he was probably the highest paid safety in the league.
So it’s hard to argue that he is seriously, or at all, underpaid.
Has he outplayed his contract? It’s hard to argue that as well, considering he is still one of the highest paid safeties 4 years into his deal.
Players complain all the time that teams don’t have to live up to the contract because teams can cut them at any time (even though that’s part of the contract…), and they complain when teams keep them for the entire contract.
Thomas should have negotiated a better deal 4 years ago, although I bet he wasn’t complaining then.
Currently the NFL is a trust/monopoly so the same rules don’t apply as other industries. While different teams create competition for players, ultimately contracts, franchise tags, and the fact that the NFL is all the same company prevent the market from being driven by players value. In most industries you can simply leave your job for a higher paying job at any time, and have the ability to negotiate your salary at any time, but in the NFL, players are lucky if they can negotiate their contract once.
Unfortunately NFL players can’t bet on themselves like NBA players due to the high injury rate and performance highly dependent on teammates and coaching. Consider – the average NFL rookie salary is $490K and the average NFL career is 3.3 years (with outliers driving these numbers higher than they should be) meaning the average NFL player earns $1.6 million which sounds like a lot.
Consider thought that if we translated that to other industries, $1.6 million split over 42 years (assuming working from 23-65), and adjusted for taxes (39% vs. 28%) means players earn lifetime $29,305 a year which is slightly more than the starting salary for a teacher.
For the record, the entire structure of Indoor/Arena football (5 leagues, 42 teams) made less than Don’t Care Bear
“Highest paid” sounds like less the issue than how much of his contract is guaranteed. Click my name to read his piece in The Players’ Tribune addressing this issue.
It’s really true. There’s maybe 3,200 people with the ability and willingness to do what NFL players do for a living. Any job with that kind of scarcity of both jobs and available talent will necessarily be worth what looks like a stupid amount of money.
Yeah it’s complicated.
They can do that in the NFL too. Good luck finding another company that will pay you millions of dollars for basically zero real world skills though.
They CAN’T do that in the NFL – that’s exactly the point. Earl can’t just go interview with the Cowboys.
Same
Didn’t Earl Thomas end his season half way through on a stretcher?
Also, it’s different in the NBA where players can basically run the league vs. The NFL (or any football league for that matter) where the players are just numbers.
Also, the 2-10 Washington Valor won the Arena Bowl. (4-11 after a 2-game aggregate playoff system just so the city of Albany wouldn’t sue the league and the Arena Bowl)
Also, Bennett been a douche since his time in Tampa
ET3 is the GOAT. Of course he wants out
I think fans should take sides in these disputes on a case by case basis.
Joey Bosa (just drafted) vs The Chargers: I was with Bosa all the way. He wasn’t asking for anything unreasonable, just things that 3rd round picks get (set by precedent from other teams). The team eventually caved, but it cost them a ton of missed time in camp. Just stupid handling by the organization.
Eric Weddle vs The Chargers: This is almost the exact same situation as Earl Thomas. I get it, you want a long term deal. But you signed an agreement to play for a length of time for a certain amount of money. Holding out for a future deal is just being a whiny baby. If you’re worth it in a year, you’ll get a deal. Shut up and play – hold up your end of the contract you agreed upon.
I’m glad Weddle left, and if I were a seahawks fan, I’d want Earl Thomas gone, too. Attitudes like this don’t help your team, and if your organization is smart, you’d get something for him while you still can. If he is anything like Weddle, when the season starts, he won’t want to hear your offers and will mentally check out of games, just like Weddle did.
Tough to tell players to “hold up your end of the contract you agreed upon” when the teams are free to break that contract and cut them at any time.
But that’s the thing – the team’s ability to break the contract was IN the contract the whole time. Did the player even read it? Hard to consider that an unfair term when the player agreed upon it right from the start. This is why guaranteed money is such a big deal, and if Earl didn’t like the idea the team could break the contract when they wanted to, he should have fought harder for guaranteed money.
The Bears and Roquan dispute has gone way past just paying him at this point. It seems like his agents are trying to set a precedent with every clause they can come up with. The first point of contention was a clause about still getting paid for games if he got suspended for a hit under the new helmet rule. I’ll give him that one because the rule is stupid. Then it came out yesterday that the helmet thing got settled a week ago. The new point his agents are fighting for now is a clause where he can’t be punished for off-the-field issues. These are odd requests because it’s been established that the Bears fight for their players in things like this. They went to bat full time for Trevathan after his helmet to helmet hit last year. Hence, it seems less like these clauses are specifically for Smith and more about his agents setting new precedents that they can argue about in the future.
I disagree about Kawhi Toronto giving up their top player for him when he has stated after one year he is gone to LA. Same here the Seahawks could get a high second rounder now because they are not doing anything this year
In hindsight for Kawhi it turns out, this was the best thing for Lowry’s career.