Richard Sherman: Seahawks have 'lost their way'
Of all the high-profile employment changes this offseason, none will have the volume — if not necessarily the impact — of Richard Sherman, who jumped from the Seattle Seahawks to division rival San Francisco. Sherman has never been shy about venting his feelings on any subject, and on Thursday, he turned his sights on his former employer.
“I think they’ve kind of lost their way a little bit in terms of how they see players and how they evaluate players,” Sherman said on Uninterrupted’s “ThomaHawk” podcast.
“It just became an issue of devaluing core players that are playing at a high level and really being curious about younger players and curious about the unknown,” he added. “They say, ‘Maybe this guy is going to be the next guy’ instead of saying, ‘Hey, you have Hall of Fame talent in your secondary, how about you ride this out?’ It would be like Pittsburgh saying, ‘Troy Polamalu is great but let’s figure out what this guy behind him has.’ ”
Certainly, Sherman’s entitled to his point of view, but the flip side of the coin is that Seattle was taking the Bill Belichick approach: cutting loose players a year early rather than a year late. “Riding it out,” in football terms, might mean that a team ends up without replacement help once that Hall of Fame talent hits the end of the line.
Sherman had some more pointed critiques of head coach Pete Carroll: “His philosophy is more built for college, you know. You get four years, guys rotate in, rotate out.” He added that veterans tended to tune out Carroll’s repeated motivational speeches: “We could recite them before he even started to say them.”
But Sherman dismissed the idea that any kind of locker-room tension, like disputes between the defense and quarterback Russell Wilson, contributed to the team’s woes or his own departure. “There was not a locker-room problem at all,” Sherman said. “That was false. That was somebody fabricating something out of nothing.”
Regardless, Sherman will get the chance to prove himself twice a year against the Seahawks, and Seattle will get the chance to prove that its out-with-the-old philosophy will pay dividends.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
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