1,460
online users
thotties       tv/movies       gaming       gear       tech       guap       rides       eats       health       bxwf       misc

Richard Sherman: What you don't know about playing Cornerback


icon

more
ADVERTISEMENT
 
topics gone triple plat - Number 1 spot 3X PLAT



section  1   0 bx goons and 1 bystanders Share this on Twitter       Share this on Facebook
 

section sports
  

 7 years ago '12        #1
6957 page views
0 comments


OGpremo 
avatar
Props total: 17043 17 K  Slaps total: 2123 2 K
Richard Sherman: What you don't know about playing Cornerback
 

 
Source: players tribune 10-13-16

WHAT YOU DONT KNOW ABOUT PLAYING CORNERBACK:

Welcome to Tuesdays with Richard on Thursdays, a weekly multimedia series featuring Seahawks All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman. Throughout the 2016 season, Richard will provide a unique and intimate glance at his life behind-the-scenes and on the field. This week, he takes on our What You Don’t Know About series.


You wanna separate the men from the boys? Put them on a football field in January. In Minnesota. That’s where my teammates and I found ourselves in the wild-card round of the playoffs last season. Six below, –25° windchill.

A few plays into the game, my visor was frozen over and fogged up, so I could barely see. I lined up across from a wide receiver on a small sliver of the field that was still in the sun. The rest of the field, from the numbers closest to me to the far sideline, was under stadium’s shadow. When the ball was snapped, I felt the receiver engage me and then push off.

Screen!

I looked into the shadows toward the quarterback and I couldn’t see anything. Between the sun and the fog on my frozen visor, I was blind. It was like I was staring straight into a sheet of ice.

But below the frost, through the bottom of my face mask, I could see the receiver’s legs — his purple and white socks popped off the green turf. I had watched the Vikings run this screen pa$s a few times on film, and I did a quick calculation in my head and figured that the ball should be coming in right about … now. So I reached out and grabbed the receiver.

My timing was perfect. I hit him just as the ball got there and he dropped the pass.

Incomplete.

I remember that so well because it was a pretty crazy play. I was basically blind, and I had to rely on my other instincts — as well as my preparation, which helped me to both recognize the play and nail its timing — to break up the pass.

But the most difficult part of that play wasn’t trying to see through my visor or battling the sun.

It was everything that happened before it.

I often get asked the same questions by fans and media. Here are three that you might guess would come up pretty regularly:

What’s the most difficult part of your job?
Who’s the best corner in the game, besides yourself?
Who’s the toughest wide receiver to cover?
I understand why I get asked these questions, but I never have good answers for them because they’re too complicated to explain in sound bites. There are a lot of aspects of my job that are difficult. And there should be — otherwise, anybody could do it. But while you can compare players, you also have to respect the unique abilities and the individual traits that separate them. Those are the things that make them great.

You wouldn’t put LeBron James in a three-point contest against Steph Curry and say that Steph is the better player if he wins, just like you wouldn’t say that Allen Iverson was better than Shaq because AI had a crossover and Shaq didn’t. It’s a more nuanced discussion — even when you’re comparing football players, and especially when you’re comparing guys who play the same position, like cornerbacks.

So if you’ve ever asked me, or wanted to ask me, about the most difficult part of playing corner, or about the best corners and toughest receivers in the game, read up. The answers — at least from my perspective — are mostly here.

In the NFL, winning has a lot more to do with survival than it does talent.

I’ll start with the first question — the one about the most difficult part of my job — right where I left off, in Minnesota on that January day.

A few plays before the ice-blind screen breakup, on the first play of the game, I had come up from my corner position in run support and put a hit on Adrian Peterson, who in those conditions was basically a glacier barreling down the field. I came up from the backside, made the tackle in the backfield and landed on the frozen turf, hard.

Those things stick with you — sometimes for a few plays, but sometimes for an entire game.

So if I had to pinpoint the most difficult part of my job, I would say that it’s not any one thing I do on any given play.

It’s doing all of it, every play.


I never come off the field when we’re on defense. That’s more a fact of life for a lot of defensive players in the NFL than it is just for a corner — linebackers only sub out occasionally, and some never do. I’m in there every play, whether the ball comes my way or not.

You may not see it on your TV screen at home because the camera always follows the ball, but if the play is away from me, and I’ve got a fresh backup receiver across from me whose job is to take off down the field and run me away from the play, I have to respect his route. I have to run with him, full speed, like he’s the No. 1 receiver and he’s getting the ball — because there’s always a chance he might. And if I get three different fresh guys off the bench running me off on consecutive plays, and I come back up to the line against their true No. 1 in a crucial situation where I know they like to hit him on a fade, I can’t stop the game and say, “Hold up, I gotta catch my breath.…”

Nope.

I have to match up — and man up — against their best receiver and do my damn job.

No excuses.

As corners, we never leave the game. That’s part of the challenge.

It’s also all part of the chess match.

In the NFL, winning has a lot more to do with survival than it does talent. Because not only can I not be tired, I can’t show that I’m tired. The eye in the sky never lies. And if an offensive coordinator up in the coaches’ box sees me limping up to the line, or with my hands on my knees sucking wind, guess where the next play is going?

So when I line up in subzero temperatures for the seventh straight play and I’m dinged up from a couple of hits before, it doesn’t matter if I’m across from a guy who’s fresh off the bench and who I can’t even see.

It’s still me against him, and one of us has to make a play.

My job is to make sure it’s me.

When you get to the fourth quarter, nobody is 100%. That’s when ballers ball. That’s when stars shine.

That said, let’s talk about cornerbacks a little bit.

Everybody wants to compare us. But like I said, it’s not that simple. There are subtle nuances to playing the cornerback position that go unnoticed by the general eye. When you flip channels to any game on Sunday, you see a cornerback line up against a wide receiver — maybe the corner is up on the line playing press, maybe he’s playing off. After that, once the ball is snapped, a lot of what happens looks the same.

But if you zoom in, you’ll notice different techniques that separate even the most elite corners.

Let’s look at a comparison a lot of people have made in recent years:

Richard Sherman vs. Darrelle Revis.

Revis and I both play at the line of scrimmage, but he plays it totally different than I do. People look at us and say, “They’re both at the line of scrimmage, so they’re both playing press. So it’s the same.”

That’s what it looks like — but we’re actually playing two different versions of press.



icon
best
icon
worst
0 comments

say something...

ADVERTISEMENT
Sign me up
 
 

yesterday...


most viewed right now
12
logo LeBron gets called out for stat padding
97 comments
1 day ago
@sports
most viewed right now
props+817
Image(s) inside Damn she living like that
122 comments
2 days ago
@wild'ish
most viewed right now
props+436
Video inside This is Janet Jackson. She will be 58 this year 💋
69 comments
1 day ago
@hiphop
most viewed right now
props+344
Post A Moment That Finished An Artist Career
287 comments
2 days ago
@hiphop
back to top