Maple Valley, Wash. — Richard Sherman is calm, quiet and engaged. Barefoot and dressed in sweats, he’s staring at a 70-inch flat-screen TV mounted on a living room wall. His girlfriend, Ashley, and his father, Kevin, are also here, watching the Cowboys-Packers playoff game in the cocoon of Sherman’s 9,435-square-foot mansion outside Seattle. It’s drizzling on the full-length basketball court and the Koi pond out back. A Domino’s pepperoni and sausage pizza is on the way. Suddenly, Sherman leaps to his feet, knocking the remote off a couch armrest and onto the floor.
“That’s 71 Trap! 71 Trap!”
The play isn’t even over yet. The Packers are doing something wacky with their coverage: Cornerback Sam Shields presses the outside wideout on the three-receiver side for about three steps, then peels off and steps into the flat, walling off an open man. The trap is meant for Tony Romo. The quarterback’s head begins to dart. He panics and scrambles to his right before being sandwiched by Packers linemen.
“Got him!” Sherman shouts.
Ashley and dad are still lounging. They’re used to this by now. But I’m at a loss. What happened?
Sherman reaches out with both hands.
“Give me the notebook,” he says. “71 Trap. It looks like a simple man coverage, but this corner has whoever stops in the flat, and the safety takes that receiver going up the sideline, and the linebacker or nickel takes the slot guy if he…”
But you can’t see the safety on TV…
“Right,” he says. “With TV, you kind of have to assume certain things are true.”
This is how the best cornerback in football watches NFL games: He diagnoses, he plots, and he guesses. The guesses will be confirmed over and over again during film-study sessions throughout the week to come, but this is a first look at the upcoming NFC Championship Game through Sherman’s eyes.
He hands the notebook back, and then the doorbell rings. The pizza is here. Time to eat.
To get to Sherman’s house from downtown Seattle, you drive 10 miles down I-5 South, east on 405 past Renton (where the Seahawks’ facility rests on the edge of Lake Washington), and along a stretch of heaven called SE Petrovitsky Rd. It is a coniferous escape route from the hassles of the city that takes you past rushing creeks and small ponds and the occasional mom-and-pop store. Turn into a quiet neighborhood and pass the horse farm and there’s Sherman’s house, which he bought for $2.3 million in June from, of all people, the NBA’s Jamal Crawford.
Several media outlets published links to the address, giving fans easy access that would otherwise take some digging to find online. And fans began showing up at his gate, even entire football teams of 12-year-olds filing off school buses in full uniform, pleading for autographs. Sherman stopped talking to local media for months as a result.
Fans soon got the hint and stopped showing up by the busload. And he started talking again. After Sunday’s divisional-round win over the Panthers—a 31-17 victory in which Sherman snagged his first career playoff interception—he was the last player in the locker room talking to a media scrum. Seahawks PR rarely steps in anymore. Sometimes a straggler will try to sneak in a few private questions after the group disperses, and Sherman almost always obliges. He drops some quote-bombs that make Twitter waves for beat writers and must-hear sound bites for TV stations. Of teammate Kam Chancellor, Sherman said, “He plays in a dark place … He damages people’s souls.”
In short, NFL play-callers are boring. Sherman estimates about 26 teams run the same handful of plays on third down. Of the teams he’s played over the last two years, he can think of three that don’t: New England, Denver and New Orleans.
“New Orleans runs a bunch of stuff out of a bunch of different formations,” he says. “And then they have a few plays that look like they’re drawn in the dirt. It just looks dumb, but if you’re not prepared for it, it’s going for six.”
“That’s 71 Trap! 71 Trap!”The play isn’t even over yet. The Packers are doing something wacky with their coverage: Cornerback Sam Shields presses the outside wideout on the three-receiver side for about three steps, then peels off and steps into the flat, walling off an open man. The trap is meant for Tony Romo. The quarterback’s head begins to dart. He panics and scrambles to his right before being sandwiched by Packers linemen.
“Got him!” Sherman shouts.
Ashley and dad are still lounging. They’re used to this by now. But I’m at a loss. What happened?
Sherman reaches out with both hands.
“Give me the notebook,” he says. “71 Trap. It looks like a simple man coverage, but this corner has whoever stops in the flat, and the safety takes that receiver going up the sideline, and the linebacker or nickel takes the slot guy if he…”
But you can’t see the safety on TV…
“Right,” he says. “With TV, you kind of have to assume certain things are true.”
This is how the best cornerback in football watches NFL games: He diagnoses, he plots, and he guesses. The guesses will be confirmed over and over again during film-study sessions throughout the week to come, but this is a first look at the upcoming NFC Championship Game through Sherman’s eyes.
He hands the notebook back, and then the doorbell rings. The pizza is here. Time to eat.
To get to Sherman’s house from downtown Seattle, you drive 10 miles down I-5 South, east on 405 past Renton (where the Seahawks’ facility rests on the edge of Lake Washington), and along a stretch of heaven called SE Petrovitsky Rd. It is a coniferous escape route from the hassles of the city that takes you past rushing creeks and small ponds and the occasional mom-and-pop store. Turn into a quiet neighborhood and pass the horse farm and there’s Sherman’s house, which he bought for $2.3 million in June from, of all people, the NBA’s Jamal Crawford.
Several media outlets published links to the address, giving fans easy access that would otherwise take some digging to find online. And fans began showing up at his gate, even entire football teams of 12-year-olds filing off school buses in full uniform, pleading for autographs. Sherman stopped talking to local media for months as a result.
Fans soon got the hint and stopped showing up by the busload. And he started talking again. After Sunday’s divisional-round win over the Panthers—a 31-17 victory in which Sherman snagged his first career playoff interception—he was the last player in the locker room talking to a media scrum. Seahawks PR rarely steps in anymore. Sometimes a straggler will try to sneak in a few private questions after the group disperses, and Sherman almost always obliges. He drops some quote-bombs that make Twitter waves for beat writers and must-hear sound bites for TV stations. Of teammate Kam Chancellor, Sherman said, “He plays in a dark place … He damages people’s souls.”
This is Sherman in media mode, delivering Randy Savage rhetoric with a Chris Rock cadence and a Denzel smile. This Richard Sherman raises teammates to mythic proportions, turns a postgame interview into an offseason-long sports culture debate, and cashes endorsement checks from Campbell’s Soup and Beats by Dre. But I came to his house to see the other Richard, the guy who writes and speaks intelligently about concussions, race, society and above all, football. (...)
What some teams call a 288 special—two identical post routes on one side of the formation and a crossing route from the other side—the Seahawks call “Dino.” The Cowboys run a route combination featuring a streaking tight end, a hitch from the slot receiver and a deep in from the outside receiver. The Seahawks call it “Ram,” a nod to Dick Vermeil and Mike Martz, who developed and perfected it with Kurt Warner in the late 1990s. Seattle uses this language to anticipate and identify what teams will run before they run it.
“If it’s third down,” Sherman says, “a lot of times you can look at the formation and know the play, especially if it’s a team you’ve played this season.”
How is that possible?
What some teams call a 288 special—two identical post routes on one side of the formation and a crossing route from the other side—the Seahawks call “Dino.” The Cowboys run a route combination featuring a streaking tight end, a hitch from the slot receiver and a deep in from the outside receiver. The Seahawks call it “Ram,” a nod to Dick Vermeil and Mike Martz, who developed and perfected it with Kurt Warner in the late 1990s. Seattle uses this language to anticipate and identify what teams will run before they run it.
“If it’s third down,” Sherman says, “a lot of times you can look at the formation and know the play, especially if it’s a team you’ve played this season.”
How is that possible?
In short, NFL play-callers are boring. Sherman estimates about 26 teams run the same handful of plays on third down. Of the teams he’s played over the last two years, he can think of three that don’t: New England, Denver and New Orleans.
“New Orleans runs a bunch of stuff out of a bunch of different formations,” he says. “And then they have a few plays that look like they’re drawn in the dirt. It just looks dumb, but if you’re not prepared for it, it’s going for six.”
by Peter King, MMQB | Read more:
Image: Rod Mar for Sports Illusrated/The MMQB
