This time, Seahawks CB Richard Sherman called the early game “an absolute poopfest” because the short week leaves players heavily fatigued. He again mocked the league’s sincerity about player safety.
LB Alec Ogletree gives Russell Wilson a hard time in the Sept. 9 game at the Coliseum the Rams won 9-3. The rematch is on a short week Thursday, increasing the chance for injury. / Drew McKenzie, Sportspress Northwest
His contempt for the arrival of another Thursday night game remains unchanged since the NFL decided to spread its schedule across calendar and planet. But Seahawks CB Richard Sherman’s expression grew more colorful as his animosity grew darker.
“It’s an absolute poopfest,’’ he said Tuesday of the game day (not the Los Angeles Rams; there are others for that). “We got home (from Green Bay) like 1 o’clock in the morning on Monday, then you’ve got to play again (in three days). Congratulations, NFL, you did it again.
“But they’ve been doing it all season, so I guess we’re the last ones to get the middle finger.”
One of these days, Sherman is going to emerge from his shell to become a confident young man.
Sherman reiterated a theme he’s offered from early in his career that the series of games, begun in 2006 to leverage the growth of the NFL Network, makes a mockery of the NFL’s claimed priority of player safety. He estimated the short week leaves him at “about 50 or 60 percent” recovery from the weekly car crash that is a pro football game.
“Your body is going to recover how it recovers every other week,” said Sherman, responding to a question about accelerating the body’s return to normal. “You can’t speed it up any more than you normally would. You just have to deal with it. It’s just one of those things, part of your job.”
Players and critics have also complained that fatigue has diluted the quality of play during Thursday games.
“You can tell, but you can’t tell, because guys are prideful when they play hard,” he said. “They’re going to go out there and give it 100 percent, regardless of what the circumstances are, because that’s how most of them are built. But you can tell.
“Everybody is banged up, so everybody is moving slower. It’s not really going to show to the naked eye. They’re like, ‘Oh, the play is sloppier,’ but the play isn’t any sloppier. Teams are running the same plays they’ve been running all season.”
On Sunday, sloppiness already was in massive evidence by participants in this week’s Thursday game. The Rams lost at home to Atlanta 42-14 and the Seahawks lost in Green Bay 38-10. For Sunday’s games, each team had a week’s rest. TV viewers may want to prepare their cringes with some pre-game warm-ups for Thursday’s game.
Sherman has served up several diatribes on NFL policies and procedures this season as well as the past. He usually targets Roger Goodell, even though the commissioner serves the owners, who are the ones that bargain many of the rules with the players union.
Sherman was asked where the issue of the Thursday game ranked.
“It’s pretty high, top five,” he said. “It’s just no regard. It’s hypocritical, as I’ve stated before. They make this huge stance about player safety and then they put the players in tremendous danger.”
Sherman said Thursdays likely will be on the union radar in the next negotiation for a collective bargaining agreement.
“We’ll be well aware come the next CBA negotiations about things like this,” he said. “There’s really not much you can do right now. It’s part of the revenue, etc, etc. I’m sure the league has something else up their sleeve. We might have a Friday night game planned, who knows.”
So the big question: “Why “poopfest”?
“They don’t want me to curse,” he said. “I know mom (is listening).”
YourThoughts