Richard Sherman, Pete Carroll see positives for Seahawks in Rams moving back to Los Angeles
Jan 14, 2016, 7:59 AM | Updated: 8:06 am
Without their annual trip to St. Louis, the Seahawks will play one fewer 10 a.m. game each season. (AP)
(AP)
BY
Former Seattle Sports Lead Editor
RENTON – Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman was only 7 years old when the Rams moved away from his hometown of Los Angeles. He was never a fan of the team even before that.
So isn’t for sentimental reasons that Sherman is glad the Rams are heading back to Los Angeles now that NFL owners on Tuesday approved the franchise’s relocation from St. Louis. It’s more practical.
“It’s awesome,” Sherman said Wednesday. “Don’t have to fly to St. Louis every year. It’s a win.”
Indeed, Seattle’s travel schedule will get a little easier now that one of their divisional road games will take them to southern California instead of the midwest. The Seahawks are annually among the league leaders in air miles flown because of Seattle’s geographic isolation relative to other NFC cities, and the 1,700-some thousand air miles to St. Louis represented the second-longest distance between two teams within the same division.
Seattle to Los Angeles is under 1,000 miles.
“You don’t have to time-change, you don’t have the 10 o’clock game anymore,” Sherman said. “It’s a win for us.”
And it will mean an annual homecoming for many of them. Sherman is one of eight players on Seattle’s active roster or injured reserve list who are from the Los Angeles area. Middle linebacker Bobby Wagner, defensive tackle Brandon Mebane and cornerback DeShawn Shead are a few of the others.
“I think it’s great,” coach Pete Carroll said. “I love that we’re playing in the west for all the California guys and all that. It’s fun to have a chance to play down there in our division. So we’ll enjoy that part of it.”
Carroll also noted the economic impact the NFL’s return will have on Los Angeles, an area that is dear to him from the decade he spent at USC.
“It sounds like an incredible plan that (Rams owner Stan Kroenke) has going and it’s going to be enormously valuable to the area for people working and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “So it’s a really big, big thing. Unfortunate for the people of St. Louis, I’m sure.”
One more reason for Carroll to be excited about the move is the strong possibility of coaching again at the Los Angeles Coliseum, where USC plays its homes games. That could be a temporary venue for the Rams while they await the completion of their new stadium in 2019.
“That would be fun,” Carroll said. “We won’t quite feel at home because we’ll be in the visitor’s locker room, but that will be fun to be there.”
