Earl Thomas: Was it just me?

[pehawk]

If we're relying on Earl to make open field tackles on his own, that shows what a shitty game the rest of our defense had.

Nah, he's actually suppose to on the plays I'm speaking of. For 31 OTHER teams those plays are long screen passes.

 

[Jville]

If we're relying on Earl to make open field tackles on his own, that shows what a shitty game the rest of our defense had.

Earl Thomas III lead the team in tackles (9) according to the box score. I thought he played well. KJ Wright had the only other noteable result.

Unfortunately, the last time he did that with a couple misses, PFF slapped Earl with a negative grade and all the PFF Zombies here were all over Thomas for a couple days running.

I'm bracing for a repeat this week.

 

[HawKnPeppa]

Earl is good for at least two missed tackles per game that nobody notices. Most of the time, the reason nobody notices is because he makes up for it with 20 other plays that seal the win. But he does miss tackles.

That's acceptable. What I have a problem with is grading somebody in a vacuum. Many of Earl's tackles are in 1 on 1, open field situations. Same thing with staring at an all 22, saying a QB has 'regressed' while dismissing the OL as an insignificant factor against Houston, then trying to bolster your judgement with a over-simplified adjective like 'adequate' to describe OL play against the Colts.

 

[kmedic]

ET is the one to blame on the first TY Hilton TD. He was supposed to cover him and got caught looking. Sherm was supposed to play zone and cover the out, so it wasn't his fault.

In any case, for the most part, ET had a good game, just a few busted coverages on his part. He just occasionally tries to do too much and needs to just play his assignment.

 

[HawKnPeppa]

If we're relying on Earl to make open field tackles on his own, that shows what a shitty game the rest of our defense had.

This ^^^^ He fixes or minimizes the impact of a lot of the gaffes made by our D.

 

[AbsolutNET]

Early in the game I thought "The LOB looks hungover today!"

Later in the game, I started to think that was actually the case

 

[MORGULON]

Very uncharacteristic from him

He missed the 4th most tackles of any safety in the league last year. Unfortunately, that is kind of in character. I actually thought he was pretty good today though.

Im not sure that is a true statistic of what Earl Thomas means to this defense. He is ALL over the field . I think he is one of our better players.

 

[Tech Worlds]

Thomas was fine. It was overrated Browner that had his usual issues in coverage.

 

[C-Dub]

Aside from the blown coverage for the TY Hilton TD, Thomas was the best thing on defense for us. BB was consistently getting abused out there. Point your finger at him....again.

 

[AgentDib]

Missed tackles in the NFL is a stat with the same problem as FLD% in baseball; the high mobility/range players are penalized for being in on a lot of near attempts while the less mobile players have better percentages because they are more likely to be in control, but make fewer total plays as a result. The baseball corrected version is eRF (estimated range factor) but AFAIK a similar variant does not exist in football and the usual caveat applies for any advanced stat metrics in the NFL where they tend to provide more noise than benefit.

That's not to say that Earl Thomas is perfect by any means, just take some of the numbers with a grain of salt.

 

[Bobblehead]

two things

1) Colts receivers were awesome catching
2) Luck placed them perfect.

 

[Dismas]

Earl had a good game today.
If you take out the blown coverage on the long TD, he had a great game.
It would be a HUUUUUGE stretch to try to lay todays defensive problems at Earl's doorstep.

 

[WmHBonney]

What I noticed on the missed tackles is that he comes flying in from nowhere (a good thing) then doesn't "break down".....he's going too damn fast and runs right by the ball carrier. That being said, I agree that ET is not one of our worries.

 

[lobohawk]

Other than the early missed assignment, the Colts only had 156 yards in the air. That's not a whole lot in these pass happy days. Guess people expect the Secondary to stop everything all the time.

 

[Largent80]

Browner played like a brown substance.

Earl was Earl. Steady and dependable for the most part.

 

[TJH]

Very uncharacteristic from him

He missed the 4th most tackles of any safety in the league last year. Unfortunately, that is kind of in character. I actually thought he was pretty good today though.

Im not sure that is a true statistic of what Earl Thomas means to this defense. He is ALL over the field . I think he is one of our better players.

I'm not saying he isn't valuable at all. I'm just saying its a fact that he misses a ton of tackles. He usually makes up for it in a variety of ways though.

 

[ColtsGuy]

I don't watch the hawks normally, so I don't know how Earl usually plays, but I thought he was a menace yesterday.

 

[pehawk]

I don't watch the hawks normally, so I don't know how Earl usually plays, but I thought he was a menace yesterday.

Yeah, that's what he does. Don't listen to any of this nonsense. Earl's all-pro for a reason. Very comparable to Bob Sanders, but better, IMO. And, I'm not saying that to be a dick, because I loved Sanders and knew when he returned in '07, that meant a SB for your crew.

Thomas covers more space than any safety I've seen in sometime. And, like Sanders, he LOVES to hit in the box.

 

[ColtsGuy]

I don't watch the hawks normally, so I don't know how Earl usually plays, but I thought he was a menace yesterday.

Yeah, that's what he does. Don't listen to any of this nonsense. Earl's all-pro for a reason. Very comparable to Bob Sanders, but better, IMO. And, I'm not saying that to be a dick, because I loved Sanders and knew when he returned in '07, that meant a SB for your crew.

Thomas covers more space than any safety I've seen in sometime. And, like Sanders, he LOVES to hit in the box.

Sanders was made of glass, I loved to hate his injury prone ass.

I am very happy with the colts saftey tandem, but Earl is a beast, at least I thought he was yesterday. You guys are lucky to have him.

 

[Hawks46]

You're going to get this from time to time.

We play a lot of single high safety. This means Earl has a lot more room to cover, and like Hawkstorian said, it puts a lot of pressure on Thomas when the rest of the defense doesn't tackle.

He has to fly in at Mach 1 and doesn't usually have time to break down. You're going to miss some tackles that way, but Earl is actually pretty amazing at getting guys down the way he does, with his size and everything.