San Francisco 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman spoke to the media during mandatory minicamp and updated everyone on his health and his new teammates. It seems he’s enjoying his new surroundings and is still on track to be ready to go for training camp in six weeks. What’s even better news about Sherman’s recovery is that because of the injury, he’s had a complete offseason to finally be able to fully heal from the minor injuries that are a regular occurrence in football.
Shermans’s Achilles had actually been bothering him since OTAs in 2017 and got worse during training camp. He explained that there was nothing to do but baby it, but you obviously can’t do that in a game. When the tear actually occurred, he predicted in his mind that it was going to happen, but he also saw an interception as the reward. In a micro-second he chose to go for it not knowing his leg was going to give out.
Now Sherman feels “light years” better and can’t wait to get back on the field. While he has enjoyed watching and coaching, it has been frustrating for the eight year vet to watch and not be able to do anything. On day one of minicamp Sherman participated in individual drills for the first time, which includes one-on-one drills. On the second day, he took part in a drill where the secondary and linebackers worked against coaches/assistants who were standing in as receivers and Kyle Shanahan was the quarterback.
Sherman has not only been working on the field with his position counterparts, he has been the impetus behind several outings off the field. There has been go-kart racing, bowling and dinners. He believes that building the trust and respect within the group off the field translates to on the filed. You, “look at each other differently if you know him off the field.”
Likely the most interesting part of Sherman’s interview was his scouting report on Jimmy Garoppolo:
James is great. He’s fun. There’s other James and James but that’s a story for a different day. He’s been great. He’s been phenomenal around the team, just another one of the guys, he carries himself well, he executes the offense great, goes through every single read. His mind works really fast which is cool. I’ve had a great pleasure watching him and look forward to try and take it from him a few times.
He’s very deliberate in his reads and he doesn’t force it if he doesn’t have to. You can see a lot of the things he learned from Tom [Brady] and just going through his progressions and going through them quick, going through the triangle, going through his reads left to right, taking what the defense gives, not forcing the big play, I think some quarterbacks get impatient and think, “ man I’m not getting that deep ball, I’m not getting that big play” and the force it and it’s a mistake. I think a lot of the times he doesn’t make that mistake.
Is his release quicker?
It definitely is pretty quick. It’s not A-Rod quick but it’s definitely quicker than most quarterbacks and it can’t really affect how you play but you just need to read him ‘hand off ball.’ You know he’s letting it go and you have to be decisive when you make a decision. If he takes his hand off the ball and doesn’t throw it, I think he will throw guys off but the way he takes his hand off the ball you have to be ready to break.
Seeing the duel between Sherman and Garoppolo and Shanahan’s offense will be fun to see come training camp. Sherman said he’s likely to be pretty excited for the first three practices before he realizes he needs to dial it down and take one practice at a time and get into his normal rhythm. It can’t some soon enough.