For Pete Carroll, the idea of bringing back Richard Sherman to Seahawks was complicated
Richard Sherman didn’t sign back with the Seahawks.
He was never going to. Not now.
The 33-year-old former Seahawks All-Pro cornerback and charter member of their famed “Legion of Boom” defensive secondary signed with the Super Bowl-champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers Wednesday.
“Not as nerve-wracking to do it in year 11, as it is in year one,” Sherman said in Tampa, Florida, Wednesday as he signed his new contract with the Bucs.
Year one was with Pete Carroll and the Seahawks, in 2011.
For Carroll and his team, bringing back Sherman was more personal and more about whole life than it was for coach Bruce Arians. His Buccaneers are focused on defending their Super Bowl title 3,100 miles away from Sherman’s home in the Seattle suburb of Maple Valley.
How could it not be more personal for Carroll?
Carroll has been involved more with Sherman’s life for 10 years, more than any coach Sherman’s ever had. He’s been in touch with Sherman regularly since the star’s final game for the Seahawks. That was at the end of the 2017 season. Carroll drafted the overlooked Sherman in the fifth round in 2011 out of Stanford. The coach then made Sherman his prototype cornerback, the long, tall centerpiece—and mouthpiece—to how he wanted the Seahawks to play defense and carry themselves.
Carroll encouraged Sherman to be more brash, more in your face, more competitive than he already was.
Sherman thrived. So did the Seahawks. They, Carroll and Sherman won the franchise’s only Super Bowl title, at the end of the 2013 season.
They played in two Super Bowls in Sherman’s first four years. They won Seattle’s first and only NFL championship—then came within 1 yard from a second consecutive title, in February 2015.
Carroll turned that fifth-round pick into a $47 million cornerback with a national persona. Sherman turned Carroll into the NFL champion most thought the coach couldn’t be, duplicating his championships and system from USC.
Carroll stayed in touch with Sherman up to and through this summer, in which Sherman was arrested and jailed in King County. He allegedly drove drunk, nearly hit construction workers with his vehicle on Highway 520 in Redmond and tried to forcibly enter his in-laws home while his wife and family were inside in the middle of a terrible night in July.
Asked if signing Sherman back to the Seahawks was more complicated for Carroll than it likely was for Arians and the Buccaneers, Carroll said: “Is it more...I don’t know if that is the right way to say it, ‘more complicated?’ I don’t know. It’s not...
“Let me say this: Maybe because we know so much, because we have so much information and are so familiar and all that, maybe so. Somebody else who doesn’t, you know, might be a different decision for them to make.
“The other side of it is, I would say it would work to our advantage, on the other side of it, too—if we were willing to do something.”
The Seahawks were not willing to do something.
Not now. Not knowing proceedings in King County court continue with Sherman. He is facing five charges: third-degree malicious mischief for domestic violence, driving under the influence and reckless endangerment of roadway workers (gross misdemeanors) plus second-degree criminal trespass for domestic violence and resisting arrest (misdemeanors).
Carroll said two weeks after Sherman’s arrest he’d been “in communication” with Sherman since the incident.
“He’s got a lot that he’s working on right now, and I wish him and the family the best and that everything works out,” Carroll said July 30.
“I really believe in the guy. He’s a brilliant person. And he’ll figure this out and put everything back in order the way it needs to be headed.
“That’s what I believe in. And I’m rooting for him.”
Football was at the back of Carroll’s thoughts about Sherman.
Multiple reports said a King County judge approved an extreme-risk protector order on Sherman in February of this year. Seattle’s KING-5 television reported last month an ERPO petition filed with King County Superior Court included text messages from Sherman to a family member showing he had been threatening self-harm with a handgun for the past year.
Carroll knows the next step in Sherman’s case has been scheduled for a pre-trial hearing Friday in King County District Court in Redmond, as Casey McNerthney, director of communication for the King County prosecutor’s office, said last month.
McNerthney said Sherman, “similar to any other defendant in that position,” is not required to appear at Friday’s hearing and can have his attorney represent him, as he did last month in another pre-trial hearing.
“I didn’t talk to Richard (recently), but we’ve been in contact, you know, kind of in a way for some time,” Carroll said Wednesday. “We always were watching Richard and had the thought in mind that maybe there was a possibility sometime down the road.
“I talked to him seriously about that earlier, prior to (training) camp, you know.
“But, I wish him the best. Glad he’s got a chance to get back, and hope for the very best for him.”
There were other, football reasons the Seahawks chose not to pursue Sherman recently.
Yes, they have massive issues at cornerback, which the Vikings exposed last weekend on soft-covering Tre Flowers and D.J. Reed in Seattle’s latest loss.
After that game, Flowers said: “Sadly, y’all want me to be Sherman.”
The Seahawks have yet to play former Washington Huskies star cornerback Sidney Jones, whom they acquired from Jacksonville in a trade last month. Jones is eight years younger and a lot cheaper than Sherman.
There are increasing signs Jones may start Sunday when Seattle (1-2) plays at San Francisco, the team for which Sherman played from 2018 until January, when the 49ers let his contract expire.
Seattle also has former New York Jets starting cornerback Bless Austin, who’s yet to play on defense after signing early this month. Tre Brown, the team’s rookie cornerback and second of three picks in this spring’s draft, is on injured reserve. John Reid, acquired in a trade last month from Houston, has played just one defensive snap in three games, last week as a nickel defensive back at Minnesota.
So they have four cornerbacks they’ve spent capital to acquire but have yet to see play for them.
Seahawks co-captain Bobby Wagner was Sherman’s teammate from 2012-17. Wagner played in two Super Bowls with him. He believes Sherman’s incidents in July in Redmond and hours earlier that night with a 911 call from his wife at their home in Maple Valley changed Sherman’s path to re-signing with the Seahawks.
“Until all this stuff happened, I thought he was on his way here,” Wagner said.
“Then everything happened which kind of slowed the process back down.
“At the end of the day, I think he made the best decision for himself. I’m excited that he’s back. I think the game of football needs Richard Sherman because of just what he brings. His mind. What he will and will not say.
“I look forward to his podcast. He better have me on his podcast, or else. I still know where you live. It’ll be fun.”
Asked why he felt Sherman was going to play for the Seahawks, Wagner said: “I wasn’t sure when. I feel like everything just made sense. He lives here. He’s around here. He had a great relationship with everybody that’s here. It just made sense.
“I thought there was a good chance he was going to come back prior to the incident that happened. I think every team was trying to figure out everything after that. At that point, you just make the best decision for yourself.”
