Richard Sherman is still good at football. Really good. One play in the Super Bowl doesn’t alter that fact.
With 3:44 left and the Chiefs facing a second-and-7 with the 49ers leading 20-17 in Super Bowl LIV, Sammy Watkins galloped past Sherman for a 38-yard reception that put the Chiefs in position to score what would be the game-winning touchdown only a couple plays later.
The gravity of the play and what eventually culminated in a Super Bowl loss for the 49ers made it easy to put the one-play sample size above the rest of Sherman’s 2020 resumé. He got beat at a key time. That doesn’t mean he’s not still an elite player at his position.
Sherman’s dominance as a 31-year-old wasn’t difficult to discern through either the eye test or stats.
His name was rarely called during the season because once again, quarterbacks were afraid to test him. He was targeted just 51 times in 15 regular season games, allowing 27 catches for 227 yards and one touchdown. He also pulled down four interceptions. Quarterbacks had a passer rating below 45 when throwing at him according to Pro Football Focus.
PFF also graded Sherman at a 90.3 – making him the 13th-best player in the league in 2020. That grade includes his postseason where he allowed seven receptions on 10 targets for 146 yards with two interceptions.
There’s a rush to call NFL players ‘old’ when they hit the 30-year-old mark, and a steep decline is expected. Sherman has hit the dreaded ’30,’ but the decline in play isn’t as drastic as it looked on that one down in the Super Bowl.
Sherman turns 32 at the end of March, and will enter the 2020 season on the final year of his contract. Whether he plays beyond that season, or whether he does so in San Francisco is still up in the air. What isn’t up in the air is his status as a shutdown corner, and one play in Super Bowl LIV doesn’t change that.
The 49ers in this year’s draft may begin looking for a long-term answer for life after Sherman, but for at least one more year, they’ll have one of the game’s top cornerbacks lining up on the left side of the field.
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