Earl Thomas' bad break is why players want contracts to reflect risk

You've seen it before: An injured player being carted off the field usually gives the thumbs up. Not this time.

Seahawks safety Earl Thomas used a different finger to send a message after he fractured his leg in the fourth quarter of Sunday's win against Arizona.

Natalie Weiner, a staff writer at SB Nation, spoke to KUOW’s Angela King about Thomas.

King: So who exactly was Earl Thomas flipping off?

Weinter: I think it was pretty clearly the Seahawks organization, probably the front office more so than any of his teammates.

But he had been in the midst of an extended contract dispute since the end of last season. He's in the last year of his contract and so he was trying to negotiate another long term deal with the Seahawks so that he would have some security instead of basically going into unemployment after the season is over.

And this was the worst-case scenario for Earl Thomas because now he's injured. Now he's no longer a trade asset at least for the rest of this season. So he's kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.

You wrote about how we're seeing players talk more about the physical toll the game takes on them and bringing that into their contract discussions.

Right. To me it's just really interesting because the culture of football is such that toughness is really valued. You just don't talk about the injury risk because you signed up to play the game and you know you got to give 110 percent.

We look to Earl Thomas and also Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le'Veon Bell, who is yet to report to his team because he also wants a new contract. They're both saying very explicitly "I want the money that I'm making to reflect each move that I'm making on the field."

Thomas didn't show up for practice because he's like “I don't want to practice if I'm not feeling 100 percent. I don't want to take the toll on my body when I'm not making the amount of money that I think I deserve.”

We saw that risk on Sunday. He broke his leg, and now his future is in question.

So after what happened to Earl Thomas this weekend, when and where do you think we'll see him back on the field again?

It seems pretty unlikely to me that he'd wind up back with the Seahawks. If they weren’t able to come to an agreement so far, I don't think that they would be able to when he hits free agency.

There are going to be a lot of other teams in the market for a future Hall of Famer, which is what Earl Thomas is. Even if he is overcoming these injuries and even if he is turning 30 in May, he still has a really high market value.