Life comes at you fast if you’re an All-Pro NFL cornerback.
One year, you’re consistently shutting down the opposition’s top receiver and/or half the field on a gamely basis. Then before you know it, you’ve lost several steps and can no longer keep pace with the game’s elite wideouts.
For former NFL Pro Bowl cornerback Richard Sherman, the moment when he realized it was time to call it quits came on a “Thursday Night Football Game” between the Philadelphia Eagles his Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In a recent edition of “The Volume” podcast that featured Eagles’ star offensive tackle Lane Johnson, the Super Bowl 47 champion stated that then-rookie wideout DeVonta Smith made Sherman accept that he needed to retire after the season (h/t Adam Wells of Bleacher Report):
“DeVonta must’ve run this comeback (route). I had him under control, I was like, bam, quick jam, easy, had him under control. He must’ve stopped and I tried to stop and my whole groin said, ‘Snap, snap, snap, snap,’ and I said, ‘Whoa, whoa.’…
I’m like, ‘Yeah, but they’re in a hurry-up,’ so I’m like bailing out. At that moment I was like yeah, this is probably my last year. I don’t got it for these young dudes right here.”
Sherman appeared in five games for the defending champion Bucs in 2021. Needless to say, Sherman was well past his prime when he joined a banged-up Tampa bay secondary, with Pro Football Focus grading him at just 53.3 on the year.
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But during his prime years with the Seattle Seahawks, Sherman was arguably the game’s best shutdown cornerback. In 2019, Sherman turned back the clock in his second season with the San Francisco 49ers and earned Pro Bowl and Second-Team All-Pro nods.
Sherman helped the 49ers to a Super Bowl 54 appearance, where they fell to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.
