Sherman riffs on life, Seahawks and fresh starts
Former Legion on Doom member tunes out noise from Seattle fans as he shifts focus to 49ers
People treat athletes like they’re not human beings. It’s really unfortunate.” Richard Sherman
There is a future one can imagine in which, shortly after the Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco 49ers finish their Dec. 2 meeting at Century Link Field, Richard Sherman will give Russell Wilson a little bit of the “UMadBro?” business.
It won’t be one rooted in reality, however.
“Naw, I doubt I’ll even talk to him,” Sherman said Friday.
The former founding member of Seattle’s Legion of Boom, who parted ways with the Seahawks this off-season and joined their divisional rivals in the Bay Area, has had plenty to say on the subject before, including some telling comments about the team’s culture to Sports Illustrated in July.
His words weren’t surprising considering his notoriety as a player is as much for his shutdown play as it is for what he has to say — Tom Brady, anyone? — but his relative silence on a rematch with the Seahawks could be interpreted either as weariness over a well-worn topic or the latent bitterness that lingered from the way things ended in Seattle.
The Pro Bowl corner played hard and he willingly played hurt in his seven seasons with Seattle — and it was the latter that resulted in him tearing his Achilles tendon toward the end of last year.
Unwilling to commit to him further, Seattle gave him permission to seek another home, and it wound up being in the NFC West.
While the Seahawks, now minus fellow LOB members Kam Chancellor, Michael Bennett and possibly Earl Thomas, are expected to sit near the bottom of the division this year, the Niners are on the way up.
The team ended the season on a five-game win streak with Jimmy Garoppolo under centre, and a defence that ranked 24th in the NFL in yards-allowed, notably giving up 100 yards rushing just once in its last six games.
Video of Sherman getting beaten by receiver Marquise Goodwin in training camp sent reverberations of glee through his legions of haters and Seahawks fans who had tired of his polarizing personality, but Sherman tunes out all the social-media noise.
“These are nameless faces, people that mean very little in your life. So you have to treat them as such,” he said Friday, as he did the media rounds promoting DAZN’s NFL-streaming service in Canada.
“At the end of the day, their opinions are like wind over a blade of grass. They’re irrele- vant in the grand scheme of the things I’m trying to do.
“I’m feeling really good. Obviously, I’ve got a lot of rest over the past eight months, the body’s feeling great, so I’m ready to go.”
The Compton, Calif., native is well-known for his player advocacy, which has come through in his interviews and content that he’s produced with The Players Tribune. The amount of blowback he’s received for speaking his mind over the years is staggering, with the expectation that he should stay in his lane over-ruling anything that the Stanford-educated player has to say.
“People treat athletes like they’re not human beings. They don’t treat them like they would their fellow man or woman. In general, they see them as a form of entertainment; an object that they have less sympathy and empathy for. So when (play- ers) give an opinion, it’s almost baffling to them that something they don’t see as a person can have an opinion,” he said.
“That’s just how people see athletes. Not just athletes, but entertainment people in general. It’s really unfortunate. It used to be people had conversations. ‘It’s nice to meet you. Cool. I’m a huge fan.’ And then you’d have a conversation. Now people stuff cameras in your face, and clash in your face, interrupt you when you have a meal, it’s unfortunate that there’s no courtesy anymore.”
His comments mirrored what Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. had to say on LeBron James’s HBO show, The Shop.
“I had it happen the other day. I didn’t want to take a picture. Like, I’m like, ‘I’m really in a rush, I’ve got to go,’” he said. “I get on Twitter, it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m a Giant season ticket-holder for 30 years.’ I’m like, ‘First of all, you’re twenty-something.’
“And then, it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s an a--hole, he didn’t want to take a picture.’
“To me, I be feeling like, I tell people this all the time, I really feel like a zoo animal. Like that’s where life’s gone for me. You know, you used to take your kids to the zoo and we used to be like, ‘You know, I want to see the lions or let’s go see the lions.’ And you go out there, and the lions are laid out. You know what I mean? And it’s like, ‘Why aren’t they doing lion stuff,’ you know what I mean? Like I’ve got people who call out, ‘Odell! Dance!’ Like, I’m a show punk, a show monkey or something. Like I’m a puppet, you know what I mean? And it’s like to me, that doesn’t feel good, but it’s like, damn, that’s what life became. But, can you ever really detach from that?”
Despite the cloud of negativity surrounding the NFL, from an anthem controversy to CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) fears to a Byzantine and continuously morphing rule book — Sherman says the game is as strong as ever.
“It’s still the same game — they’re really trying to ruin it with these rules, though — we’re seeing some of the best support we’ve seen, ever,” he said.