The Pete Carroll experiment of Earl Thomas at punt returner didn’t fair well in the Seahawks first outing against the Packers. The outcome was a fumble and a gain of three yards on two punt return attempts. Carroll says that he won’t give up that easy and has confirmed that this will take some growing pains for the Seahawks and Thomas, so he will continue to nurture the plan both in practice and on the field.
“It’s his first time out and we have not had a lot of catches and we do not have a lot of background in live situations,” Carroll said. “So we’ll just grow and he’ll get way better at it. He’s done a terrific job of preparing for it. We have other guys that can get back there at kick off as well. I’m going to really try to manage that well and the reps that those guys get. We’ll see how it goes. Percy [Harvin] won’t return every kickoff this season, but we’ll have him in there whenever we need him to. Those guys work so hard in these game plans that they need a break sometimes. We’ll be working on it as we go but we do have to learn as we go. Percy has done a lot of kickoff return, it’s just Earl has to get a lot more reps. So we’ll try to get him right.”
It is surprising that Carroll is so adamant to keep Thomas at punt returner considering he’s had no track record of being a good punter. In fact, Thomas only returned four punts in college.