The Seattle Seahawks will sign tight end Julius Thomas — if rumors sparked by the Denver Broncos free agent’s own dad prove accurate. Greg Thomas, who played for Pete Carroll in college way back in 1983, dropped some highly conspicuous hints about where he’d like to see his son end up on his Twitter account back in January. But now that the NFL free agency period is just days away, the sports media is finally noticing.

The Seahawks have a hole to fill at the tight end position, and Broncos-watchers say there’s no chance that Thomas returns to the team that drafted him in 2011, even though he played only one season in college at Portland State and was primarily a basketball player there.

Greg Thomas, father of Julius Thomas, with Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.

A few weeks ago, Broncos blogger and online radio host Brandon Spano revealed that before the 2014/15 season began, as the Broncos were coming off their Super Bowl defeat against the Seahawks, Thomas scored an $8 million per year contract offer from the team.

Spano reported that team sources questioned Thomas’s desire to play football, saying the 26-year-old receiver saw the sport as a “business opportunity,” and that in the words of another Broncos player, “Julius is here to get his money and get out.”

That comment seemed to confirm the rumors around Denver for much of the season, saying that Thomas was “soft” and refused to play hurt.

And then, on February 17, Greg Thomas apparently took to the comments section of a Broncos blog — using the pseudonym “Lethylg,” the same handle used on his Twitter account — to defend his son’s apparently mercenary approach to the sport.

“Last I checked this was a business,” the poster believed to be Julius Thomas’s dad wrote. “If he would have destroyed his ankle ‘for the team’ Elway would have been dropped him this offseason with the quickness. Like a piece of rotten meat. Go get paid young man, go get paid. It’s only in America where people want to destroy another man sport unity because it doesn’t please them. BLACK OPPORTUNITIES MATTER.”

On January 30, two days before the Seahawks made a return trip to the Super Bowl only to lose a thriller to the New England Patriots, Greg Thomas posted this tweet.

@BobHighfill Extremely proud of both. Seahawks tried to trade Harvin for him. Pete could end up coaching father and son. — Greg Thomas (@lethylg60) January 31, 2015

The tweet in which Greg Thomas flat-out says that his son will play for the same coach that he, Greg Thomas, played for came after at least two others praising Carroll — and this sharply-worded tweet making it clear that he was not impressed with the Broncos organization or their Hall of Fame quarterback.

@PostBroncos Don’t blame Fox for Elway giving Peyton the reigns and making him uncoachable, unapproachable and bigger than the TEAM. — Greg Thomas (@lethylg60) January 13, 2015

Greg Thomas in the January 30 tweet also lets slip that the Seahawks attempted to acquire Julius Thomas earlier in the 2014 season, which would seem to be hard evidence that Seattle has a strong interest in bringing Julius Thomas on board, unless of course Greg Thomas is just repeating rumors as well as starting them.

[Top Image: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images, Interior Image: Greg Thomas Twitter]