Under coach Pete Carroll, the Seahawks have done as good a job as any team when it comes to keeping internal strife under wraps. Which makes the details of Seth Wickersham’s deep dive into the dysfunction there even more stunning.
The Senior Writer at ESPN The Magazine has taken a closer look at the Richard Sherman situation in Seattle. Along the way, Wickersham fleshed out plenty of nuggets regarding manifestations of the defense’s resentment of the offense — and, specifically, the resentment of Russell Wilson.
Wickersham sets the tone with a rewind to June 2014 and a notoriously chippy offseason practice that eventually would become one of multiple offseason practices deemed by the NFL to violate the rules. Sherman at one point intercepted a Wilson pass, threw the ball back at him, and shouted, “You f–king suck!”
And that was before Super Bowl XLIX.
Sherman took the outcome of the last-minute pull-a-rabbit-from-a-hat-then-boil-it-Fatal-Attraction-style loss to the Patriots hard. As evidenced by his in-game brouhaha with offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell from last December, Sherman still has strong feelings about the pass-over-run decision that prevented Seattle from winning back-to-back Super Bowls. That mindset contributed to the team’s open willingness to be open for business in the offseason regarding the possibility of trading Sherman.
“He’s always looking at what other people are doing,” a former Seahawks assistant coach told Wickersham regarding Sherman. “He’s made it personal. It’s your fault we’re not winning. It wears guys thin.”
Wilson’s inauthentic, manicured persona looms over the article, as does the perception that coach Pete Carroll protects a quarterback whose offense doesn’t score enough points as often as it should.
“A lot of guys, not just on defense but on offense, want Russell to fit into a mold that’s not him,” former running backs coach Sherman Smith told Wickersham. “Why is everyone allowed to be themselves but Russell?”
That sense has been there since Wilson arrived, with a string of interviews and press conferences that Wilson always finishes by saying, “Go ‘Hawks!” — a habit, as PFT has heard for years, that prompted some in the locker room to mock Wilson behind his back with a high-pitched version of his catch phrase.
Sherman all along has had his own catch phrase, even if he only used it that one time he caught a pass Wilson didn’t mean to throw to Sherman. The full article makes clear the reasons for the team’s willingness to shop Sherman, and it will invite speculation as to whether the page truly has been turned, and whether things will be any better now that Sherman begins his seventh NFL season.