Seattle Down a Bit
Another witty pun title, man I love how AWFUL those are! This will probably be a dead story by the time I post this. But as I type, this is a pretty big deal on twitter. It’s getting pretty personal between people as they share their opinion’s, not about the NFC championship game, but the post game interview given by the man who has far and away the biggest chip on his shoulder in the NFL, Richard Sherman.
This wasn’t anything shocking to me. This guy has built quite a reputation for himself as being loud, and he is always looking to build up that massive chip that’s already on his shoulder. He makes no bones about disliking 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh….his coach while at Stanford. Never heard of anyone disliking their college coach unless they did something WAY over the line. His excuse is that Harbaugh didn’t promote him enough going into the 2011 draft. Now I’m not that smart, I didn’t go to Stanford, but I KINDA think that if he were THAT great of a prospect he wouldn’t have needed Harbaugh to promote him and would have went higher than the 5th round. But good on him for proving the doubters wrong and evolving into one of the league’s top corners.
But it gets tiring with this guy. “U mad bro?” has become legendary, but at the same time when that picture was snapped of him jawing at Brady it was completely classless and AFTER the game. Why are you literally going after a QB AFTER the game? And he did it with Trent Williams after the NFC wildcard game last year, and he did it with Crabtree last night after he mad the awesome deflection that led to the game ending interception. And then of course the post game interview he says he’s going to shut Crabtree’s mouth for him. Right, I’m sure the helmets are going to come off and you’re going to throw down because that happens often in football.
A lot of people defended his interview. I know someone (might have even been my buddy Drew Dalby) said something to the affect of “until someone beats him he can talk all he wants”. I disagree completely. A) WR’s have torched Sherman before. T.Y. Hilton destroyed him earlier this season. Roddy White had a great game against him in last year’s playoffs. Larry Fitzgerald, Vincent Jackson, there have been enough guys who have gotten the better of him despite being one of football’s best corners. B) we aren’t talking about tennis, boxing, MMA, etc. This is a team sport. The Seahawks aren’t undefeated, they were a bounce or two away from losing both of their playoff games, they aren’t the favorites in the Super Bowl (as of right now). So I don’t agree with that take at all, plus it will just serve as a distraction for the team going into the big game.
Bruce Arthur who as some of you may know is one of my favorite writers was also one of those people defending Sherman. I responded to a few of Arthurs tweets that were basically saying “we need more of this in sports”. I understand that side of it (especially for guys who are looking to get a great quote and having things to talk about for a living), but just because someone does something like this, or something like P.K. Subban last week (which Arthur was also in favor of), doesn’t mean that you don’t want more entertainment in sports. A sick celebration after a big goal in hockey is fine, but there is a line (which isn’t to say I had an issue with Subban’s celly). A post game interview taking a shot at Michael Crabtree is fine, but THAT was over the top in my opinion. There is such thing as winning with class and Sherman didn’t do that. You can be candid and be emotional, but you can do it AND keep things relatively professional while doing so.
I don’t recall if Arthur retweeted it or said it on his own but I know at one point Muhammad Ali was brought up and something to the effect of “if you think that was bad, I hope you don’t google Muhammad Ali and see what he used to say”. You know what? He’s not playing for a team. He could make it all about him, because it WAS all about him. It is apples to oranges and a terrible example. Bruce also said something to the effect of “the guy just made a huge play 5 seconds ago to win the NFC championship and everyone expects him to all of a sudden settle down”. Well, considering guys have done so throughout the history of the NFL being broadcasted…yeah. At least it didn’t have to go to the level it did. I just couldn’t have disagreed more with Arthur on this and as I said to him on twitter “Raw starts at 6 every Monday night if you wanna check it out…”
I didn’t hear this opinion when Sean Avery was in the NHL. Was he just being entertaining with his “sloppy seconds” comment in December of 2008? There is entertainment, but there is also a line. For me, Sherman crossed it and acted like a complete jackass. I thought it wasn’t genuine at all and was a total “look at me” moment. He talked about him and Crabtree. I don’t care how much I may loathe someone, if I’m on a team that just made it to the Super Bowl, and I had a microphone immediately put in my face, I would MAYBE bring that up. The guy is awesome but part of what fuels him is what is going to make him cross everyone’s line someday soon. He’s one of the elite players in the game, he’s a very bright kid, and I love that he does give great quotes and doesn’t just give the cliche answer. But he needs to scale it back a bit. It’s more about Richard Sherman than the Seattle Seahawks and that gets old real fast.
In closing, lost in this story is the fact that the Seahawks are on their way to their 2nd Super Bowl. A great season by most teams Super Bowl favorite entering the season. They had a target on their backs all year and yet still had the number 1 seed in the much tougher NFC and going to the dance. They sure proved me wrong as I tried to go against the grain (and stand by what I believed) in saying they wouldn’t even make the playoffs. Pete Carroll and his staff don’t have the easiest pack of dogs to look after as Sherman demonstrated last night, yet they kept this talented crew on track all year long. Seattle and Denver, the number 1 offense vs the number 1 defense, it has the ingredients to be a classic!
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