As far as we know, there are three teams — the Seahawks, 49ers, and Buccaneers — who have recently reached out to Richard Sherman to discuss with him how ready he is to return to the NFL.
Through their first three games, those three teams have allowed 259 passes in 374 attempts (a 69.3% completion rate), 2,615 yards (6.9 yards per attempt), and 19 touchdowns, while picking up just five interceptions. So, maybe it’s a better time than ever for Sherman to sign with a team.
What we also know is that Sherman is still waiting to face judgment on the five misdemeanors he was charged with in a July incident near Seattle. Sherman was charged by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office with driving under the influence, reckless endangerment of roadway workers, criminal trespass in the second degree (domestic violence designation), resisting arrest, and malicious mischief in the third degree (domestic violence designation). He pled not guilty to all charges.
I recently spoke with Sherman about all of these things — the professional and personal — to see how he’s doing off the field, and we watched five of his plays from the 2020 season to see how close he is now to the Richard Sherman of old, once the best lockdown cornerback in the NFL. There’s a lot for teams to unpack off the field. There’s no question about that. On the field, I think Sherman still has what it takes when healthy; it’s how teams are going to balance it all at this point.
Doug Farrar: We have a special guest on the video podcast today. One Richard Sherman who I’ve known for a while from the days in Seattle, way back.
Richard Sherman: We’ve grown a lot since then.
DF: We did a tape piece in 2015, and I know you’re looking for entry back into the league. I went back and watched your tape from last season, and I was thinking, okay, let’s go back and do this again, because people forget so quickly. You played your ass off last year when you were healthy.
RS: Right, right. When I could.
DF: In a defense… I mean, the worst injury luck I’ve ever seen for any defense. That was interesting.
RS: That was unfortunate.
DF: So, we want to start with the obvious and to whatever extent you do or do not want to answer these questions. As much as you can or want to say, what happened?
RS: It just one of those bad days; you know, people have bad days… caught me on a bad day, off day. Too much time on my hands, too much time to think. It’s unfortunate. It’s one of those things, one of those times in life you reach a bit of a crossroads. It seems my crossroads was seen a bit more publicly. I’m grateful for what happened. It was a good eye-opening experience; a good chance for me to find help and to get the help I needed and to have some conversations that I wasn’t able to have before and to get some clarity that I did not have.
DF: You mentioned a crossroads. Was that personal or professional or both?
RS: More personal. I mean, professionally I’m not really at a crossroads. Football is fantastic. When I get on the field, football is one of those things you can do in your sleep. I can roll out of bed and be really good at football. I think just overall growth in life, and just understanding purpose and meaning, and why you do certain things.
DF: How have you worked to make amends in your personal life? What is different?
RS: Honestly, I didn’t really work to make amends. I worked to better understand, to better be able to function mentally, to be able to answer those questions that I had. To be able to overcome the obstacles that I was facing and just give myself the tools to be able to move forward in life. I think a lot of us are unequipped to deal with some of the thoughts and processes that we need to be able to deal with and instead of dealing with them we just kind of push them to the back and kind of next-play mentality as individuals and that’s what you do.
DF: I’m playing amateur psychologist right now, but we’ve known each other a while. You came into the league with a chip on your shoulder the size of a large house, and that has served you very well professionally. I think that’s a big part of your game. Doug Baldwin, Michael Bennett, so many guys on the Legion of Boom teams had that. I think Pete Carroll looked for that. Does it come up in your personal life in ways where you have to say, okay, I’ve got to manage this here [off the field], this is different?
RS: I don’t know. Not so much to my detriment. I wouldn’t say that was a thing. The more the next play mentality and not addressing the issues that come up. It’s kind of like bad plays in football — you don’t have to deal with them until you have to deal with them. During the game, life’s happening and you’ve got to move onto the next play in order to be better in that day. You know I think that analogy works towards life… I think bad things happen and you feel like you’ve just kind of gotta move past that and deal with it later and continue to push forward in order to be successful in order to survive in the moment and you realize that you pile so much stuff on that you don’t have time to address it. And by the time you address it, it’s a mountain worth of stuff that it’s tough to dig through.
DF: Where does your legal situation stand?
RS: It’s still in process. The courts are kind of backed up… with the pandemic, everything’s slow. So it won’t be really settled until after the season’s done.
DF: There are different ways the league handles this; usually, they wait until things are sorted out legally. Have you heard from the NFL all about potential ramifications from this?
RS: No, I haven’t heard anything about any ramifications.
DF: When did you decide: okay, looking at myself, I’m doing all this stuff, now I want to come back, I want to be a player again? When did that happen? I would assume maybe you talked to your family about it, maybe people in your circle that you’re talking to?
RS: Honestly, I never really stopped. I was working out and training the whole time. You play football your whole life, so, it’s kind of that time of year, your body knows it’s time to ramp up and so it’s kind of hard to not do that; it’s kind of forced to have it at this point.
DF: I’m an NFL GM. I have to ask the hard questions because I’m about to sign you. What the hell? Why should I not be worried?
RS: I’ve got a decade’s worth of resume that should stand more firmly than a momentary lapse in judgment. I’ve got a decade worth of character and intake. To be judged off of … if you’re judging me off of a momentary lapse, I think I’m probably not the player for you either way.
DF: You may come back and burn that team later.
RS: That’s usually the way that thing goes.
DF: Let’s get to football. In 2019, you allowed 34 catches on 61 targets for 373 yards, 123 after the catch, one touchdown, five picks, six pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 45.3 on 681 coverage snaps, which means basically quarterbacks against you were better off throwing it to section 230. Last year, eight catches on 14 targets, 87 yards, 29 yards after the catch, one touchdown, and one pick, opponent passer rating of 69.6 on 210 coverage snaps.
You had a down year [2018], and that was the [Achilles] injury. Other than that, it’s like 50, 60, 40, 70 [passer rating allowed] the whole time. I asked you during Media Day at Super Bowl LIV about your play then as opposed to earlier in your career, and this is what you said:
I guess in 2015, it was about what I didn’t know more about the risks I was able to take. In 2018, with the sutures in my hair, I couldn’t take the same risks, so I had to play straight, smart positional game. Once I got the sutures removed and my athletic freedom back, I still had the craftsmanship I used that whole year. Safe plays, conservative plays, we lost the aggression that can follow them. It changed the way I approached it a little bit. I couldn’t play the way I wanted to in 2018 so that’s been a transition this year.
After the 2020 season and coming into this season, would you have any changes to that self-scouting, or is that kind of guy you are now?
RS: No, actually, I’m more of the guy that I was before my Achilles [injury] than I was even in 2018, 2019 and that’s more because, somehow, I was able to lose the weight that I wasn’t able to lose after my Achilles [injury]. It was like I had 15 pounds of “dad weight” — I guess is what it was — that I couldn’t lose for my life. I mean, I tried to diet, I tried to starve myself, tried to sit in the sauna all day, tried Keto, I tried every which way to lose weight and I could never get below 207. And before I tore my Achilles, I never played above 196 ever in my career. I never played, I never got above 200 in my life – never seen it on the scale. Once I got San Francisco and got past my Achilles and thought, Hey, I’m at 208, but I thought once I get to running and do all that I’ll burn that off and I’ll be back to my normal weight. I never got there.
So, I just had to adapt to being the weight I was, I had to adapt to being 208, 209 and it made me strain a lot more, it made me fight a lot more. It made me less explosive and it was harder to recover. People may say, Oh, you know that’s not that much weight, but it’s harder to stop at 210 when you’re used to being 195 and stopping at 195 and jumping at 195. It’s like having a 15-pound weight vest on. That’s what’s been cool about this offseason is, somehow, the weight’s been gone. I’ve been very conscious and cognizant of my diet and got the weight off and it just feels like, freaking literally, a weight’s been lifted. I’m more springy, I’m more dynamic, I’m able to run longer, to move faster, without feeling the fatigue and sluggishness that I felt with that kind of weight.
DF: Well, let’s get to the tape.