When Seahawks coach Pete Carroll was initially asked about safety Earl Thomas raising his middle finger to the Seattle sideline while riding to the locker room after fracturing his leg on Sunday, Carroll said he didn’t know anything about it or “where it was aimed at.”
Most people saw Thomas’ gesture as his final statement about the circumstances of a year that featured an extended holdout, a request to be traded if the Seahawks wouldn’t give him a new contract and Thomas’ admission that he’d be doing anything he could to avoid injury with unrestricted free agency looming after the season.
Carroll, who said last week that he thought the unhappiness was behind them, got another chance to talk about the finger on Monday and seemed to have a clearer idea about Thomas’ intent. Carroll said on 710 ESPN that players “deserve latitude and they deserve understanding and they deserve empathy” even when “someday they’ll see things differently when they look back.”
“I know there’s been a lot of talk about it, people that are criticizing whatever happened don’t understand ... give him a little slack,” Carroll said. “This is a very, very difficult moment that most people would never understand what this is about.”
Given the way things have played out this year, it seems like Sunday’s game was almost certainly the last for Thomas in a Seahawks uniform. That was the case before any gestures were made and it’s hard to see Sunday’s developments changing any minds in Seattle.
