The significance was lost in the heat of the moment. But with Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman already gone, and now Thomas unlikely to return, something special has been irretrievably lost.
We shall never see their likes again, never see such charisma, such talent, such individuality, such menace, in a secondary again.
When Earl Thomas was carted out Sunday with a broken leg and middle-finger salute to the Seahawks sideline – iconoclast until the very end – it marked the unofficial end of a Seattle sports institution: The Legion of Boom.
That significance was sort of lost in the heat of the moment, and the sound and fury over Thomas’ injury and his reaction to it.