Seahawks’ Richard Sherman talks, says ‘might have gone over the top’ in 2016 outbursts

Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman talked to the media after the team’s minicamp practice Wednesday, and he used the opportunity to get a few things off his chest.

In a particularly noteworthy media session, Sherman said, among other things, that he has a “fantastic” relationship with quarterback Russell Wilson, that he “might have gone over the top in some encounters” with other members of the Seahawks last season, and he denied that he ever asked for a trade out of Seattle.

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Here are some excerpts of Sherman’s press conference:

• Regarding offseason trade talks that the Seahawks had about him: “It’s just a conversation they have every year. I guess this year, more people knew about it, but it’s conversations they have every year – everybody is open, everybody is available. They just made sure I knew, and you guys found out and they were pretty open with it. So there was never really a situation where anybody asked for it, it was just conversation.”

• If he personally asked for a trade: “We didn’t. We did not. We just had conversations about it. It is what it is. It was great conversation, great dialogue, we were transparent. Nobody’s really worried about it.”

Here was Richard Sherman saying he didn’t ask for a trade. pic.twitter.com/GNk8ttEMeW

— Brady Henderson (@BradyHenderson) June 14, 2017

• On the ESPN article by Seth Wickersham that stated the Seahawks have lingering locker room issues from a loss in their last Super Bowl: “I think he’s just looking for attention, just like a lot of reporters are these days. I think it’s tough for good journalists who make good stories and really focus on the game and really focus on doing their job the correct way to make a living, because you’ve got click-bait writers like that. He could have easily made a story about how a great team has a great competitive environment and a competitive locker room and an iron-sharpens-iron mentality from offense to defense. And that would have been fantastic, it would have been a fantastic story, it probably would have still got the same number of clicks, but he went from a controversial, nonsense angle, which anybody could do. You could do that about any competitive team in the NFL. You can take one snapshot moment of a practice – of a team on their way to the Super Bowl – and say, ‘Wow, there must be discord there. Wow, they must be not going to the playoffs this year.’ But he could have made a story about, ‘Wow, their offense and defense really go at it every day and really push themselves to the limits. And really celebrate the competitiveness and appreciated how great the team is, how great the locker room has to be for guys to be able to be that competitive on the field, then come into the locker room and have a fantastic relationship. But he didn’t, because he needed clicks, he wanted to make it controversial. That’s just an unfortunate landscape we live in now. So we didn’t really worry about it, because we know what the truth is. Obviously it doesn’t matter what the truth is to the public, because you’ve got stories like this, and people are like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on in the locker room?’ And it’s like, well we’ve won a playoff game every year since then.”

• His relationship with Russell Wilson: “Oh, it’s fantastic. It’s fantastic. We’re teammates. It’s like a family. It’s like everybody else in a family. We fight for one another. Just like I’m fighting for the other 52 guys out there, I’m fighting for him, and he’s fighting for us. And we have a great appreciation for how tough our quarterback is and what he has played through. Last year he played through a number of injuries, and he’s not doing that because, ‘Oh, man, I’ve just got to go out there and it’s a job.’ He’s doing that for the guys next to him, and we appreciate that. We think he’s a great quarterback. But it doesn’t matter what we say at the end of the day, because we can say that until the cows come home, but one guy says he has a story and he has heard a rumor about this, about somebody down the way saying something, and that’s the truth.”

Sherman on his relationship with Wilson: pic.twitter.com/oJqiC00hJa

— Brady Henderson (@BradyHenderson) June 14, 2017

• Regarding Pete Carroll saying Sherman had “self-inflicted issues” during last season: “He means I hold myself to a high standard and I am a heart-on-the-sleeve kind of player, so I’m competitive as all get out. That’s what he means. I’m competitive as anybody out there. At all times I’m competing. At all times I’m trying to win. At all times I’m trying to push the envelope and push the limits, and it has always been the case, publicly, privately and elsewhere. So that’s what he means. That has never changed, it’s never wavered. At times it might have gotten kind of overblown. I might have gone over the top. But he understood where it was coming from and so did my teammates.”

• If he has a brand new attitude for the 2017 season: “It’s like a brand new, old attitude. It’s taking it back. Like I was a cold dude, I’m getting back to my ways.”

• If he thinks the Super Bowl loss still lingers for the Seahawks: “I don’t. I don’t because for it to linger most of these guys would have had to be here and the guys that are here have moved past it. We’ve had Pro Bowl, All-Pro seasons since then and we’re battling. Sometimes you run into injuries like we did last year and the year before and you kind of get derailed or you run into a better opponent like we did Carolina that year and it doesn’t work out. I don’t think that has anything to do with a Super Bowl hangover or anything, it’s just the luck of football. … I don’t think it has anything to do with a Super Bowl hangover. I think we still have the tools and we still have everything we need. We win it this year and I think the questions are still the same. I think it’s just, ‘Oh, well they got one and is the window closing?’ Because you always need a story.”

• If he would like finish the rest of his career with the Seahawks: “I would definitely like to retire a Seahawk and finish my career here. … Yeah, I think this is a great city. I think this is a city that I’d like to raise my kids in. The people here are much more polite than the people in L.A., and I’m from L.A., so that’s saying a lot. But I think that it’d be a great place to raise kids and to continue my career.”