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).”
13 Comments
Sherman’s absolutely right.
And the NFL can have their Thursday games without the short-week turnaround. The solution is so obvious, it’s painful. The teams playing Thursday night should always be teams coming off a bye. That wouldn’t be hard to do. Well, for anyone but the NFL, it’d be simple enough.
Agreed, here’s my post from earlier this week.
I’ve been thinking about the TNF football problem.
My solution is add another bye week. Every team gets two byes and only schedule Thurs game after a bye. Last bye is three weeks before the end of the season so no TNF last two weeks of the year. Bonus the season is one week longer! College ball has several byes a season and works fine. Players will probably like the extra rest mid-season too.
Everybody bellyaches about how they feel once the NFL is shut down for the offseason so extending the regular season one or two weeks into Feb. Seems like it would be literally harmless… I think its a sound idea.
I’d suggest backing up into August, but with the changed climate, that means 125-degree games in KC for weeks.
Yes…we remember that 115 day in San Diego( and brutal loss) the Hawks endured and that was in September. Not thinking that would be to anybody’s advantage.
If Sherman and his fellow players want it bad enough, they can bargain it away in the next CBA. But owners will want something in exchange. What will it be worth to players, not all of whom have Thursday games?
I think the bye-week requirement could work, but getting the regular season in between Labor Day and New Year’s Day would preclude a second bye. They do this for only 10 Thursdays. but anything more than the T-Day traditional games is unnecessary.
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Richard Sherman <— fire, ready, aim
Au contraire. He knows his targets and has been aiming and firing for years. Poopfest made headlines everywhere, and added momentum to bargaining away Thursdays in the next CBA.
Of course Sherm would chastise the NFL in this weeks small talk since Pete instructed them to eliminate the debacle in Wisconsin from memory banks pronto to focus on the Rookie QB and his now Rookie coach….It beats talking about the “Murder on the NFL road” in that Midwest Bermuda triangle where in GB Dec. visiting team wins are almost non existent.
This is the NFL…GB looked like world beaters in doing EVERYTHING right …in addition to their “Gimpy QB” waltzing around like luxury time at a grand Wisconsin Ball… all in the confines of their home stadium.
Add into that was one NFL team holding a 6~0 edge in Takeaway margin… and getting away with a barrel of holding penalties that should span over 3 games in magnitude of lucky breaks.
The Pack looked great at home but they are 2~4 on the road… again this is the NFL..
I just don’t see everything going the Rams way while the other team endures every mishap possible… as it did in that horrendous cluster of adversity blows to the head the Hawks endured… on that GB road.
So Que up the Jaws theme from the murky waters of Puget Sound. I think their home/away win streak vs SEA ends tomorrow night….short prep time or not.
If I can parse what you’re saying here . . . the NFL is rigged?
At times its not hard to feel that way…. perhaps the NFL wants a marquee group like GB in the running thus all the free holding penalties.
I just hope Sherm has that wonderful end to the “Rams Streak ” to talk about after this one…it will make the Thursday suffrage he expounded upon a little more tolerable.