Richard Sherman on TV for Seahawks-49ers Thursday? Oh, yes, he has a few things to say
Richard Sherman is back. And, yes, he has something to say.
The former Seahawks All-Pro and Super Bowl-champion cornerback continues his debut season as an analyst for Amazon’s Thursday Night Football broadcasts this week. It’s the game he and many others circled when he took his new job this spring: Sherman’s former Seahawks against Sherman’s former San Francisco 49ers.
You don’t need to have given to the Jeff Bezos Empire to watch the game, by the way. Fox 13 is carrying the Amazon Prime’s telecast live over free television airwaves. Kickoff is at 5:15 p.m. Thursday at Lumen Field.
“I mean, I still know a lot of the guys, a lot of the guys on both sides,” Sherman said Tuesday on a conference call Amazon put on to promote its Seahawks-Niners telecast. “I know a lot of the staffs on both sides. I know the general managers on both sides and have a very good relationship with both.
“So, yeah, it affects it. But you are cheering for both teams. You are in the middle, you know what I mean? I get to go to both sidelines. I think I’m good with both locker rooms. I think I’m good with both fan bases. It’s a pretty good spot to be in.
“Just hope that Pete (Carroll) and those guys can get that run game — I mean, the run offense and the run defense. Because if they don’t get it fixed by Thursday, it will be a long day (for Seattle).”
Sounds diplomatic, eh?
Well, if you ever watched the brash way Sherman, now retired at age 34, played for Seattle — or, heck, if you’ve ever heard him talk — you know has more to say about the Seahawks.
He began his career with them. He became who he was in the NFL with them from 2011 to ‘17.
And he got dumped by them.
He played in a third Super Bowl while with San Francisco from 2018-20. He signed with the 49ers after the Seahawks waived him — without, he says, any offer to stay — in the spring of 2018. That was with one season and $11 million left on his Seattle contract. It was months after Sherman tore his Achilles tendon in what became his final Seattle game, at Arizona Nov. 9, 2017.
Sherman has remained friends with Carroll. He came back at the Seahawks coach’s invitation this summer, to mentor Seattle rookie cornerback Tariq Woolen, specifically.
So Sherman was asked Tuesday if he’s now cool with how his time ended in Seattle. You know, a time-heals-all-wounds, it’s-a-business kind of deal.
“Oh no, I wasn’t. I wasn’t cool with how it ended,” he said.
“At that point, you expect an offer. When you’re in that position — you’ve played for a team, you sacrificed for as long as you did — you expect them to send you an offer...You gave me the right to say no.”
Sherman said he wanted the opportunity to answer whether he’d take less money to stay with the Seahawks for 2018.
“You know: ‘Would you lower your number from 11 to $7 million?’ And I can say no,” he said. “I could be like, ‘Yeah, I’m not willing to accept that.’ Then it’s like, ‘Oh well...’ you know what I mean? I made that decision, I wasn’t willing to take less money. I had to walk. Understood.”
Sherman said Seahawks general manager John Schneider never did that with him. He had no agent. He was representing himself in contract dealings.
Like Bobby Wagner’s exit
Sherman likens the way Schneider and the Seahawks sent him away without an offer of reduced pay to how the team treated All-Pro linebacker and team captain Bobby Wagner this spring. Wagner signed with the Los Angeles Rams after Seattle released him to save more than $16 million against this year’s salary cap.
Wagner also was representing himself without an agent. He said he didn’t hear from Schneider, Carroll or anyone with the Seahawks that he was getting released. Wagner heard from leaked reports.
“I think that’s the same thing Bobby would say: You don’t ever have a conversation to say, ‘Hey, this is the problem: We have this cap number. We’d like to lower it. We don’t think we can pay you $17 million or whatever it is this year. Are you willing to take nine?’” Sherman said.
“There’s a, ‘Hey, well, I appreciate you guys coming to me. I understand you gotta...it’s a business. It’s a business.’
“When you don’t say anything and then you find out or you come up and you’re like, ‘Hey, you guys cutting me? I heard you guys trading me. I heard, like...what, what, what’s, what’s going on?’
“They’re like, ‘Yeah, well, you know, we’re trying to do this or we’re trying to do that.’”
Sherman’s point is obvious: Keeping fringe players barely on the Seahawks’ roster in the dark on their futures is one thing, and, in fact, is the way of NFL life. But to not be upfront with franchise cornerstones upon whom you built a Super Bowl champion and paid more than $100 million to in contract extensions, well, that’s no way to treat pillars.
“These are foundational players. (These) are just some of the greatest players to ever play at this franchise,” Sherman said. “You would expect a little bit more respect, a little bit more of like, ‘Hey, like we’re gonna do right by you.’ And that’s what kind of rubbed everybody the wrong way.
“It’s like you’re not doing right by us at all. And it’s not like you offered me, ‘Hey, here, take $5 million this year.’ And I said ‘No, man.’ After that, like, cut me, you know, that would be a whole different deal. That’d be a respectable thing. And everybody leaves with a smile.”
This past spring, Carroll and Schneider talked over each other taking responsibility and apologizing for how Wagner found out about his release.
Schneider said Wagner representing himself without an agent as a middle man created a “communication” issue.
“That’s on me. I own that,” the GM said March 18.
“That’s on me,” Carroll interjected.
“I wish I could’ve handled things better in that regard, from a communication standpoint,” Schneider said. “I owe it to him, the organization owes it to him. “From a timing standpoint, I wish I would’ve handled things differently. ... “Too much respect to have that happen.”
Sherman was asked Tuesday how a program like Carroll’s and Schneider’s in Seattle, renowned for being player-centric built on strong relationships with players while they are with the Seahawks, could have two of the highest-profile player exits in team history be so sloppy?
“That’s a great question,” Sherman said. “You might have to ask John and Pete.
“Things have gotten better, you know, more amicable. Me and John spoke last year before I went to Tampa (Bay, for a final season of playing in 2021). Me and Pete have spoken pretty much the entire time.
“I didn’t blame Pete for it. You know, it was John. I thought we’d have better conversation than this and that’s where it’s kind of weird when he said the stuff about Bobby, because you’d have thought they learned that time. And he’s like ‘Well, he didn’t have an agent.’ It’s like, ‘Well, just text him or tell him what you would have told an agent.’ You have a personal relationship with this player and you know you’re wrong. ...
“And so that was the disappointing part, because with everything else, it’s been a well-run franchise. It’s been a royal(ly) run team. It’s been a great culture, a great organization. And so you just thought they would handle those things a lot better.
“Not that it would be a beautiful breakup, it really never is, but just that it would be more respectful.”
Sherman’s relationship with Russell Wilson
Sherman says of his relationship with Carroll: “It’s been solid. It’s been solid. You know, Pete’s a good dude. He’s a good coach.”
Sherman had this to say when asked about his relationship with former Seahawks teammate Russell Wilson.
“There’s no hostility, at all,” Sherman said. “You know, the truth never expires.
“I think the perspective that everybody had wasn’t the perspective of transparency and truth. I think they’re getting a lot more transparency and truth now. I think a lot of people sugarcoated a lot of things. You know, not that you just like the human being. He’s a great human being, you know, a great dad, great, great father. He’s a cool teammate. But I think there was blame being slandered around and people getting fired, and told they weren’t doing a good job and it wasn’t all their fault and they were getting blamed for it.
“And so you know, that’s hard on anybody.”
Sherman said he talked with Wilson briefly for Amazon’s telecast of Wilson’s Denver Broncos against the Indianapolis Colts on a Thursday night in early October. That’s the only time they’ve talked in years, Sherman said.
But, no, the bridges aren’t burned between Sherman and Seattle. He said he will always consider himself to be a Seahawk, including if the Pro Football Hall of Fame eventually enshrines him.
“Yeah, I didn’t do enough with the San Francisco 49ers to consider myself a San Francisco 49er,” he said. “I got an All-Pro. I got a Pro Bowl.
“But, you know, we won the Super Bowl (in Seattle), went to two NFC championships, won two NFC championships. We had the ‘Legion of Boom.’ So I’d go in as a Seattle Seahawk,” Sherman said.
Those enshrined into the Hall of Fame don’t pick which teams they will represent. The Hall just lists all teams a legend played for.
Sherman considers the Seahawks his team.
“But there were times where it was...it was more of a question than it had been in the past,” Sherman said.
Richard Sherman, the broadcaster
In June, Sherman accepted Amazon’s offer to be a pregame, halftime and postgame analyst along with former players Tony Gonzalez, Andrew Whitworth, Ryan Fitzpatrick and host Charissa Thompson. That’s for Thursday night NFL games Sherman once called “a poopfest.” When he was playing for the Seahawks he vocally opposed the short turnarounds from Sunday games and tolls they take on players’ bodies.
Sherman said he’s learned some things in his first year in sports journalism rather than being a subject of it.
“I would say, interviewing is a lot harder of a job than anybody gets credit for doing, and asking the right question,” he said. “Getting a great answer comes from great question and pushing the right buttons, and knowing which buttons to push and which questions to ask, it’s really important.
“Fifteen to 20 seconds is hard to get any point in. No matter how smart you are, no matter how well you are educated on that perspective, it’s going to be tough.
“What else have I learned? Not everybody likes to talk. Sometimes, you are going to get one-word answers. You have to know how to be reactive and follow up with, hopefully, something better and get a better result.”
This story was originally published December 13, 2022 at 5:49 PM.
