Baltimore Ravens superstar safety has no regrets when it comes to his infamous flipping off of Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll last season when he was a member of the Seahawks.
Thomas stand by his actions, noting that it wasn’t directed towards his teammates as many may have thought, but towards Carroll only.
“I don’t regret my decision,” Thomas said, according to ESPN’s Josina Anderson. “If my teammates felt like it was toward them, I regret that part. But I don’t regret doing that to Pete.”
Thomas went down with a broken leg, an injury that required surgery, and was carted off the field last Septembers when the Seahawks took on the Arizona Cardinals.
As he was being carted off the field, Thomas flipped off the Seattle sideline as he felt that Carroll, the head coach of the Seahawks, wasn’t being genuine when he showed concern on the field following Thomas’ injury.
“I gave Pete the middle finger because I felt like he wasn’t being honest with me,” Thomas said, adding that he hadn’t spoken to Carroll since the incident.
Following the incident, and amid a rash of criticism for flipping off the sideline of his own team, Carroll said that people needed to cut Thomas “a little slack.”
“People that are criticizing whatever happened don’t understand,” Carroll said at the time. “This was an earth-shattering moment for a kid. He’s trying to play this game he loves, and all of sudden this happens again. He knew exactly what happened to him, so he went right to what it’s going to take to get back.”
Thomas, who is one of the most iconic players in Seahawks’ history, inked a four-year, $55 million contract with the Ravens in March.
“I think my time just ran out,” Thomas said. “Pete and the front office didn’t value me like they used to, and I just talked to Coach Carroll, and he was saying how he was trying to get me in the plans of getting a new contract. But I got hurt the next week. I think I hurt myself too by my actions getting carted off the field.”
Thomas says that he and Carroll just didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, including work ethic, among others.
“We got to walk with each other the rest of our lives because we won a Super Bowl together,” Thomas said. “But they’ll love you one minute and then hate you the next. That was our relationship.”
