FanPost

Thoughts on Donald Thomas

This started off as a comment on the Donald Thomas out for season thread, but after seeing the girth of it (ha) I decided to make it into a Fanpost.

In my mind, Donald Thomas getting injured again and missing another season demonstrates two things:

1) We all need to be patient with injured players. Vick Ballard rushed back from his ACL tear, only to tear his achilles in his other foot, possibly from favoring that leg. Thomas rushed back from his quad tear, only to reinjure it a week later. The coaches and players themselves need to be completely sure that they are ready to go, regardless of the pressure to win. Also, we as fans need to stop being pricks and complaining about injured players waiting a while to come back. Yeah, Landry and Toler took a while to come back from their respective injuries, but it's better than them missing another season already.

2) Speaking of those two, I don't want to hear anyone praise Donald Thomas yet smear Landry any longer. The same people who whine about how Landry is "injury-prone" say things like "Well, Donald Thomas looked really good the first game and a half!" Guess what? So did Landry. He was leading the NFL in tackles if I remember correctly. You're not allowed to be mad about Landry and Toler's injury concerns and then defend Donald Thomas. He now averages less than a game per season for the Colts... much less than our "injury-prone" defensive backs. And yes, the injury concerns with our DBs were well known, but Thomas made his own visit to IR before with a Lisfranc fracture, ending his rookie year with a total of 1 game played. That means he has missed 32 games with injury (including playoffs, and yes the Dolphins made the playoffs that year as well) while only starting in 23 games (according to NFL.com). That means he has missed 58% of potential starts with injury, which will jump to 68% this season. My numbers may not be totally accurate, as I'm not willing to spend the time digging through info to see if he has missed any other games due to injury. I'm not bashing Grigson for any of the signings, I'm only trying to show that if you're going to bash Mr. McGriglets for signing Landry or Toler, you better start calling Thomas a bust as well. It’s only fair.

Welp, I hope you were able to read all that. Feel free to throw some insults, possibly even some discussion my way.


This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Stampede Blue's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of Stampede Blue's writers or editors.