Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman told MMQB Thursday morning there is no bad blood between himself and the Seahawks and he doesn't expect to be traded.
In his most expansive comments on the topic since the team began acknowledging publicly that he could be traded, cornerback Richard Sherman told Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated’s MMQB in a story published Thursday that he doesn’t expect a trade to happen and retains a good relationship with the team.
“Very little chance it happens, but both sides are listening,” Sherman said via text, according to Breer. “I honestly don’t have much more to say about it than what I’ve already said. We have a great relationship. … There is a lot of love and respect. There is no bad blood.”
Sherman also said that he doesn’t think the Seahawks are trying to send him a message via the trade rumors about their hope that he wouldn’t repeat his actions of last season if he stays with the team in 2017.
“Not at all,” Sherman said. “I’m not in the least bit concerned about that.”
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Those were the first comments of any kind Sherman had made in more than a week, and his first since Seahawks GM John Schneider further acknowledged Wednesday that there is substance to the trade rumors.
His brother, Branton Sherman in an interview with NFL.com on Wednesday, stated that Sherman is hoping to stay with the Seahawks and “doesn’t want to leave behind that brotherhood” and hopes to stay with the Seahawks. Branton Sherman echoed a similar thought in a later interview with KJR-AM 950.
The overall theme of Branton Sherman’s comments Wednesday was that Richard Sherman is eager to turn the trade talk into motivation to prove the doubters wrong yet again.
“This is something that’s going to play positive on both ends — on the organization that is trying to regain its power and on Richard,” Sherman’s brother, Branton, told NFL.com. “They’re making it seem like they don’t need him. This is the same player that everyone doubted and denied, saying he’s too tall, too slow, his hips aren’t good enough, fifth-rounder. This is a new chip Richard is going to use. He’s going to be like, ‘You think you can trade me? I’m going to show you guys. That you would even talk about trading me…’ This is a new obstacle, mentally.”
Still, the genesis of the trade talks has more to do with Sherman’s rocky 2016 season when the ball wasn’t in play — the sideline blowups, the deviation from what Carroll expected him to say to the media, etc.
That Sherman is 29 and the Seahawks could clear out some cap space (Seattle could specifically save $11 million against the cap in 2018, though they’d probably spend some of that trying to find someone to replace Sherman) by trading him are simply by-product considerations that could influence a decision. But few think Seattle would be even thinking about a trade of Sherman had he played the way he did last season but without the other stuff.
In fact, it’s worth remembering that by all accounts none of this has been Seattle picking up the phone and asking what teams would give them for Sherman, but other teams calling the Seahawks and asking what it might take.
Calls that have been more plentiful this year because other teams saw the same things everyone in Seattle did and wondered if maybe that might make the Seahawks more amenable to talking about a trade for Sherman.
The difference this year is that the Seahawks, instead of basically just saying no (I’d imagine they always at least heard the other team out just in case) offered a little more welcoming “sure, tell is what you’re thinking” when teams called asking about Sherman.
Well, the other difference is that they also then acknowledged taking those calls.
As reported earlier, Schneider offered even more clarity to that in a couple of radio interviews Wednesday. Intriguingly, Schneider said that the conversations started at the NFL Combine while also saying “I don’t know if anything would ever happen.’’
One possible conclusion from those two statements is that the Seahawks have spent the last few weeks getting a sense of what might be offered for Sherman and haven’t gotten anything to make a trade worth it and aren’t expecting that to change now.
But who knows? The run-up to the draft the next few weeks is a time when phone lines will continue to burn throughout the NFL and the draft itself always inspires additional urgency and action.
Jeff Howe of the Boston Herald reported Wednesday that the Patriots could be interested in Sherman if they lose Malcolm Butler.
And boy, wouldn’t that be another bizarre angle to all of this if Butler set off a chain of events that led to Sherman being traded to the Patriots? Maybe, some would argue, Butler already helped set off all of this with his interception against the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, the play that Sherman referenced again following his on-field blowup against the Rams, which the team likely views as among the biggest of his 2016 sins.
There are likely to be a few more odd moments, though, before this story is over.