“Maybe Shaq Thompson is something different altogether. In his freshman year at Washington, coaches created a hybrid safety/linebacker position just to get him on the field. Over the next three years, he played five other positions. His mere presence was a weapon … That’s the paradox of Shaq Thompson: Nobody knows exactly what he is. They just know they want him.” — Emily Kaplan, MMQB“In the hands of a creative defensive coordinator, he’s an ultra-dangerous chess piece, capable of shifting between safety and linebacker, wreaking havoc with a quarterback’s pre-snap reads. He may not have perfected any one trait, said the scout, but teams can’t ignore a player who delivered so much college production while never learning just one position.” — Ebenezer Samuel, New York Daily News“After my mom got sick and went on disability, my grandma was sick, so we all moved back to that house. In sixth grade, my mom wasn’t able to provide for me, so I moved in with my godmother and goddad, the Nunleys. They raised me from sixth grade to eighth grade. They had four kids of their own. I call them my brothers. In ninth grade, I went back to my mom. Lived with one of my coaches named Coach Reginald Harris from ninth grade to 10th grade. Then I moved back with my mom and lived with my grandma through 11th and 12th.” — Shaq Thompson, as told to USA Today“I tend to side with the scouts who see Thompson as an outside linebacker in a 4-3 scheme. And I would put him on the weak side (Will) where he can run to the ball, scrape over the top and clean up … The downside is his limited size and that offensive linemen who square him up can overpower him at the point of attack.” — Matt Bowen, Bleacher Report
“My ideal position would be outside linebacker. It’s more like a downhill safety, a Kam Chancellor-type of deal. Cover the tight ends, go to the flat, just come down and lay the wood.” – Thompson
2012
“I don’t like when people congratulate me on all this. I will say, ‘Thank you.’ But I don’t like all this stuff on me because that’s how people get too bigheaded and just mess up.” — The Seattle Times