Sherminator: "I'm the best corner in the game. When you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that is the result you are going to get. Don't you ever talk about me."
Andrews: "Who was talking about you?"
Sherminator: "Crabtree. Don't you open your mouth about the best, or I'm going to shut it for you really quick. L...O...B*."
Please note that Sherman is saying "LOB" an abbreviation for "legion of boom" a nickname for the Seattle defense. He is not saying LL Bean as commonly thought on the f-book.
Sherman's epic manic diatribe has been the subject of endless commentary, twitter battling and punditry. If we are really want to add something meaningful from the sporting nerd side we have to break it down into two aspects:
PART 1: The Fact Check
Anytime someone comes in talking all that noise...ya gonna get a fact check. Fact in question: Richard Sherman is the best corner in the league. Quite a claim! Sherman is a fairly young, third year player. However in each of the past three seasons Sherman has intercepted the ball 4, 8 and 8 times respectively. Good for the most in the league this year, second most last year and also the most total interceptions in the NFL over the span of his career. This is also the first time that any player has had 20 picks in the first three years of their career since Ed Reed did it over a decade ago. Snap!
Now naysayers will appropriately point out that interceptions only tell part of the story. Perhaps a better stat is passes defended, defined by the NFL as each time a defender successfully deflects a pass thrown to a player he is defending. Well Sherman has amassed 61 passes defended over his career, ranking him...you guessed it....number 1 among players over his career.
Prior to Sherman bursting onto the scene Darrelle Revis was unequivocably considered the best corner in football, with his 2009 season one of the best statistical seasons ever. Though Revis also had an outstanding 2013, this is his first year back from ACL repair. Directly comparing the two corners this year is tough as Sherman had more talent around him and Revis is likely still regaining function in his knee. Perhaps the better comparison is a head-to-head look at their sophmore seasons:
Revis Vs. Sherman — Sophomore Seasons
| TA | REC | %CT | YDS | YAC | INT | RAT | |
| D. Revis | 84 | 49 | 58.3 | 510 | 204 | 5 | 59.1 |
| R. Sherman | 87 | 41 | 47.1 | 634 | 135 | 8 | 41.1 |
TA= targets — REC= receptions allowed — %CT=percentage caught — YDS= yards allowed — YAC= yards after catch allowed — INT= interceptions — RAT= opposing QB rating when passing into his coverage
Comparing and analyzing corners is notoriously difficult as the better corners get thrown to the least. Many years the highest INTtotals are collected by players that QBs like to go after. Both players were targeted equally, Sherman picked the ball more, allowed a lower completion percentage and held QBs to lower rating. In the argument of Revis Island versus Optimus Prime (Sherman's self-nominated nickname after shutting down Megatron) it would be hard to argue against Sherman.
Best corner in the league. Fact Check.
Part 2: Is this tight?
Most critics of Sherman's rant cite a lack of class and an unwillingness to win with grace. Tom Brady commented that "we win with graciousness." Justin Verlander even said that Sherman would get a fastball "high and tight." (YAY Detroit matters!). And its hard to argue with that sentiment. Any time a player is brash and arrogant in victory it definitely does not look classy. (Maybe brady is still mad though.)
But "is it classy?" is a different question from "is it tight?" Sherman's rant though decidedly not classy is mos def tight. Its tight in the way that this is tight and this is tight. 99.9/100 post game are completely uninteresting: We gave 110%, we had a good game plan, gotta thank my teammates, much respect to [opponents]. DONT CARE! If this is anything it is definitely interesting. It is the best corner in the game (see above) throwing it in your face like an aggressive WWF-style hype man and it is awesome. The major caveat here is that if you are a Niner's fan then you had to suffer through a game with rough officiating, where your probowl linebacker has a career threatening injury...only to have Sherman take away your trip to the Superbowl and then throw it in your face. So yah you probably hate him then. Sucks.
"Both teams played hard...goodnight and godbless."
If Sherman had played a better game, then maybe, MAYBE I could see this being acceptable. But he made exactly one play, a routine pass-breakup that miraculously turned into an interception. It was a very good play, but it was one play.
ReplyDeleteYes, you can argue that nobody threw at him all day, but that's the absence of plays, not the making of them. Two other Seattle players had interceptions in that quarter. I didn't see them talking shit after the game. I didn't see Russel Wilson or Marshawn Lynch talking about how much the Niners' team are garbage. There's no question in my mind that both of those men did waaaaaay more to beat us than Sherman did. Yet now he wants to stand up there and talk about how much of a badass he is? Now, when the game's over, and he doesn't have to see the Niners again for an entire year?
Two years ago, when the Niners were still under Alex Smith and making their first playoff run of the Harbaugh era, the division championship game against New Orleans came down to the wire, and the Niners won when Vernon Davis made a spectacular touchdown catch with nine seconds to go to win the game. He was so emotional after the catch that his teammates had to help him off the field in TEARS. Did he jump on the nearest camera and talk about how Drew Brees is a sorry-ass quarterback, or the Saints Defense a bunch of scrubs? Did the Giants do that in 2008 when they beat the infamous 18-1 Patriots in the Super Bowl?
Was the achievement of contributing one play towards defeating a team you were favored over at home so amazing that it warranted something like this?
Oh, and since we're fact checking, I'd like to point out that there were two elements to Sherman's claim. Not only did he insist that he was the best cornerback in the game, which I am grudgingly prepared to admit, but also that Crabtree was a "sorry-ass receiver". Is there a way to check those facts as well?
Actually...not getting thrown at ever, then making a brilliant play to save the season and go to the Super Bowl...a play which you practiced frequently, duplicated several weeks prior, and anticipated was coming in that exact moment...against a receiver you have ongoing beef with due to off-field shenanigans...against your most hated rival team. Um, that pretty much qualifies as the BEST game. (Also, "the absence of plays" is the definition of ultimate success for a CB, e.g., c.f., the GOAT Neon Deion's low INT totals throughout career.)
DeleteHe could have personally intercepted the ball (which he did not), and run it back 107 yards for a touchdown while breaking 8 tackles along the way and it STILL wouldn't have justified something like that, not when two other DBs made interceptions of their own, and the offense actually scored enough points to win.
DeleteI acknowledge that Sherman is a superb CB, and that his play there was without question a great one. Yet the greatest plays in the history of football did not result in a display like that. Was Sherman's pass-breakup more amazing than the Immaculate Reception or The Drive? Because neither of those resulted in something like the above tirade. Hell, I've seen Richard Sherman himself make better plays than that one.
You got a beef with a guy? Outplay him (which Sherman did). Jaw at him on the field (which Sherman did). I can even see mocking him to his face mid-game (which Sherman did and drew an Unsportsmanlike for). But if this is the kind of WWF "awesome" shit we're going to see from now on in the NFL, I'm going back to Baseball.
Well, he didn't intercept it partly because Crabtree pushed off (as noted by Sherman), but obviously it wasn't a penalty level of push-off. But also intentionally tipping the ball to a teammate is definitely cooler / more rare than intercepting it yourself (not that he wouldn't have picked it himself, if he had been able to...but his tip was really well executed).
DeleteBut anyway. As G said we are not really arguing much of anything. You think his postgame behavior was inappropriate (which objectively it more or less was)...while I am a Seahawks fan so I loved it irrationally and feel that it was super awesome, nearly as awesome as the health benefits of probiotics.
More importantly though, I think we can all agree with Erin Andrews that it's time to move on from this well-worn topic, and instead talk about probiotics.
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ReplyDeleteI doesn't really appear that we are arguing about anything here. The above article asserts a few things 1) sherman is the best cb in the NFL 2) that what he did was classless and arrogant and brash. In the end he shouldn't have done it because it will piss more people off than not.
ReplyDeleteThe third point really is that I personally found it entertaining anyway, probably cause I had no personal stake in outcome of the game, and loved seeing something different. Its pretty unlikely that this will become the norm for postgame interviews, but if it did then I wouldn't care anymore....cause then it'd be normal.
Also its time that we talk about probiotics.
Agreed. Probiotics are...
DeleteUm...
What is a probiotic?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o71NrzNK0aU
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