Around about 2015, I asked Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll why safety Earl Thomas was so important to his defense. Everybody already knew that Thomas was a key part of the Legion of Boom, one of the NFL’s all-time greatest defenses at his peak, but I wanted Carroll to give us something we didn’t already know about Thomas.
Carrol’s answer was unusually succinct: “When was the last time you saw anybody complete a deep post against us?”
It was a fair point.
Carroll doesn’t have Thomas anymore, but he does have rookie cornerback and Pro Bowler Tariq Woolen, and that might be just as good. With 3:30 left in the first quarter of the Seahawks’ game against the Kansas City Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes decided to test Seattle’s defense with a deep post to Justin Watson.
Ordinarily, that would have been an explosive completion. In this case, it would have been a touchdown, and that would have put Kansas City up, 13-0.
But ordinarily, defenses playing Mahomes don’t have a cornerback standing 6-foot-4, weighing 205 pounds, and running at a sub-4.3 clip. The Seahawks, however, have Just That Guy.
That’s just obnoxious. pic.twitter.com/xwE7VqrZEi
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) December 24, 2022
Not only did Woolen catch up to Watson on the play, he signaled a check to a fellow defender along the way. That, friends, is some serious swagger.
