Seahawks free safety Earl Thomas broke the shin bone — the tibia to be exact — in his left leg when he collided with teammate Kam Chancellor while breaking up a pass in the second quarter of Sunday’s game. Not long after being helped off the field, Thomas tweeted that that the injury had him contemplating retirement, overshadowing the Seahawks’ 40-7 win. His teammates downplayed the retirement talk after the game.
Earl Thomas’ retirement talk was ‘a little bit of an exaggeration,’ says Richard Sherman
The Seahawks safety pondered retirement on Twitter after suffering a broken leg, but his teammates don’t think it’ll happen.
Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports
“All of us consider retirement just about every game,” cornerback Richard Sherman said in the locker room after the game, according to ESPN. “And when you get an injury like that, a lot of stuff goes through your mind.
“I would think it’s a little bit of an exaggeration.”
Head coach Pete Carroll reiterated that they still didn’t know the severity of the injury, much less a timeline for his potential return. Given that it’s a broken bone in his leg, that seems unlikely, if not impossible, to happen any time this season and into the playoffs.
“When you get injured, it becomes very emotional,” Chancellor said. “Sometimes you say things you might not mean. Sometimes you say things you might mean. It’s one of those things you just have to let him sit back and breathe, let him sit back and go through his process.”
Thomas played in 118 straight games since the Seahawks drafted him in the first round in 2010. He missed the first game of his career last week, and ended up watching his team lose to the Buccaneers from a Buffalo Wild Wings in Portland.
Seattle has the NFC West all but locked up, and they’re playing for the second seed in the conference, which would give them a first-round bye to convalesce.
Thomas is an impossible player to replace, but the Seahawks will lean on Steven Terrell to do the best he can.
“Our guys are very mature about stuff like this,” Carroll said after the game. “They’ll handle it. They’ll miss the heck out of him, but they’ll immediately start pulling for [Terrell] to do his thing. They know that’s the way it has to go.”
See More:
