Richard Sherman confirms he will play on Sunday, addresses getting burned in practice

Saturday will be the long awaited return of Richard Sherman on the field in a live game situation. While the San Francisco 49ers cornerback did not say how may reps he will be taking on Saturday in Indianapolis facing the Colts, he did say that both his hamstring and Achilles are fine, and that he could have played last week in Houston. He paused, grimaced and laughed when he added that Kyle Shanahan and the coaching staff held him back.

Sherman said that his hamstring injury happened when he took a weird step on an angle and that it was about 80 percent when he was held out of practice.

Sherman has done a lot for the young team adding a veteran voice not only in the defensive backs room, but to the entire team as well. Shanahan used him as a teaching moment when his first rep back in practice against Marquise Goodwin went viral on social media. Shanahan explained that it is admirable when you’re not afraid to fail. Sherman spoke about that specifically and what he had to say is applicable for all of us.

I’ve been beat a TON in practice. I’ve been beat probably a thousand times in practice, but the amount of times I’ve been beat on a Sunday, with the lights on is very limited, because in practice you work on your craft. You try and figure out what you’re going to do. That’s like you guys putting out an article that’s a rough draft and putting it out for everyone to see. It’s like ‘Hey this is a rough draft. Yes, it has some typos, some mistakes, some notes and stuff that doesn’t look right. The wording is off, no commas, no periods, yada, yada, yada...but this is a rough draft. I’m sorry that you saw it before I put out the final product.” What you see on Sunday is the final product so I think people get kind of lost in that.

Sherman explained that people can get lost in practice reps. Sometimes players are working on technical things, new methods. That’s how they find what works for them and what doesn't. Then on Sunday they use their best stuff. That rep was him getting back on the field after eight months off. Sherman said you can take any player who hasn't played in that amount of time and see their first rep back against an opponent and it won’t look like what it did eight months prior, but in a few weeks it will start looking like what it did before the time off.

He closed his media session with a great thought on criticism:

That’s what small minds do. They find things to criticize. They are like ‘Oh, man! Look, somebody else is not doing great.’ But people that are successful and that are dominant, and great at things they do, you take failure with a grain of salt every time. Cool, I lost that rep, I learned from the rep, and I got better and I moved on. The next rep, you learn from it, you get better and move on. If you let people’s criticism really define who you are, you’ll always be a failure.