The San Francisco 49ers signed cornerback Richard Sherman to a three-year contract, and naturally that has brought out some raw emotions. 49ers fans are dealing with seeing a hated rival join the team, and Seahawks fans are seeing one of their beloved players go to a one-time hated rival.
Sometimes these emotions do not bring out the best in people. Enter this Seahawks fan.
This is so stupid.
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) March 11, 2018
There are #Seahawks fans burning the jersey of one of their best players in franchise history because their own team released him against his will and Sherman took a new contract worth almost $40 million.pic.twitter.com/0mvj4YqM8H
I get not being happy when a player goes to another team, but I have almost never understood the burning of a jersey. In this particularly case, it is even more idiotic. The Seahawks released Richard Sherman because they did not want to pay him the salary they had agreed to with him. His salary was not fully guaranteed, and so the team released him rather than pay him. That’s par for the course in the NFL where there are virtually no fully guaranteed contracts.
I get that he went to a rival, but it’s nonsense to get worked up over it when your own team was the one that released him. There’s this notion that he must somehow remain loyal to the Seahawks by not signing with their rival. That’s absolutely absurd.
This will certainly draw out jokes about Seahawks fans and the bandwagon, but this idiotic phenomenon is something we see across the league. I would bet decent money there is an example of a fan burning a jersey for virtually every team in the league. There are plenty of smart fans for every team, but there are some real knuckleheads out there. This is just one example.