The three things that officials look for are:
1) If a player lowers his helmet to establish a linear body posture prior to initiating and making contact with the helmet
2) There is an unobstructed path to his opponent,
3) The contact was clearly avoidable and the player delivering the blow had other options.
It looks like its a 3 strikes and you're out for Thompson from the way I see it. You could say Cooks lowered his head, but I think that was for protection more than anything, make yourself smaller, limit the hit, and from the stills both players lower their helmets at the same time. But if the laws are there to PROTECT players, then this should have been a flag against the defender because going to point 3 above, Thompson had different options.
The thing is, I find disturbing similarities between both hits, Now if these players were rookies I could give them the benefit of the doubt and as has been said this isn't the way the Seahawks train to tackle.
