John Blanchette: Upset Sherman reaches hurricane force

SEATTLE – He raged. He threw his helmet to the ground. He charged at defensive coordinator Kris Richard and barked at Pete Carroll. He went at Richard again. Yelled at DeShawn Shead and resisted the calming entreaties of noted diplomat Michael Bennett. Kam Chancellor – not in uniform this day – tried to scold him into silence and he exploded at Chancellor, then stormed away as Bobby Wagner took a crack at mollifying him.

The only thing missing was poor Erin Andrews and her microphone.

Richard Sherman wasn’t himself Sunday afternoon. The Seattle Seahawks’ singular cornerback was nature’s fury – the crackle of random lightning bolts, the centripetal madness of a tornado and all the gusty anger Seattle was supposed to endure over the weekend but didn’t.

He was a volcano. The crust cracked, the cap blew and magma – unprintable magma – flooded out.

He was Mount St. Sherman.

And he was unhinged and more than a little ridiculous and likely did more to hurt his team’s cause for a spell than he did to help it.

But that’s football, we were told. Football is passion and rage and violence. Except when it’s keeping your head when something goes wrong and short-term memory and playing the next play.

Apparently, it’s all those things.

Between the raindrops at CenturyLink Field on Sunday, it was also a bizarre amalgam only moderately connected to the NFL’s usual middling amusements. Over the course of 194 minutes, we saw the league’s best defense (the Seahawks) render the best offense (the Atlanta Falcons) hapless, and then we saw the best offense render the best defense, period. We heard the Falcons completely silence the congregation of 69,081, and then we heard it come back to life as its heroes were revived. And, yes, we saw Richard Sherman rise from his rage to keep an up-for-grabs ball alive, tipping it into the hands of teammate Earl Thomas for the game-turning interception in a 26-24 Seahawks win – and then seal the deal with his defense on Atlanta star Julio Jones on the deciding fourth down.

Which, yes, was pass interference as surely as Michael Jordan pushed off on Bryon Russell to drill the shot that won the 1998 NBA title.

Richard Sherman, America screamed, got away with another one. Didn’t you, Richard?

“No,” he insisted. “I felt like we won the ballgame.”

Okay, well, then he certainly got away with a preteen’s tantrum that might well be cause for discipline on another team less equipped to deal with it.

“I’m sure you all would have made it a big deal if we didn’t,” said defensive end Cliff Avril – and of course he’s right, never mind the tense.

Let’s set the scene: The Seahawks, having held Atlanta to a mere 86 yards in the first half and battered quarterback Matt Ryan mercilessly while rolling up a 17-3 lead, start surrendering swaths of yardage. Then Jones, one of the game’s premier receivers, gets deep when Kelcie McCray – subbing for the injured Chancellor – botches a coverage adjustment. Touchdown, Falcons.

Eruption, Sherman.

“It was a blown coverage,” Sherman explained, as if it needed no explanation, “and we should never give them points when we could’ve stopped them and held them to nothing.”

Well, that’s an admirably high standard, and yet it doesn’t quite explain the mercury bursting the top of the thermometer.

“We’re emotional, it’s an emotional team, emotional guys,” Carroll shrugged, “and we ride that emotion.”

But?

“When we get that hot, we have to control it better so we don’t get in the way of what’s coming up,” he admitted.

Which it almost certainly did. While the Falcons figured out they could make turn play-action passes into gold, the Seahawks defense began playing like random fingers rather than as the usual fist. Ryan turned one touchdown pass into another and then another (on another blown coverage) and in the space of a quarter the Falcons had a 24-17 lead – and all the Seahawks had was the echo of Sherman’s theatrics, reminiscent of his staged 2014 interview tirade with Andrews.

“One play doesn’t define the moment,” said Bennett the peacemaker. “You need to let that moment go and realize there’s a bigger picture and it’s about winning the game, not winning that one play.”

In the locker room, Sherman still had the volume knob cranked to 10 in an exchange with Shead, while Carroll nervously made the rounds muttering about “drama.”

Later, he insisted, “I’m not worried about it one bit.”

Echoed Avril, “You tell me a family that never gets in an argument.”

The scoreboard allowed them such magnanimity, at least after the mugging on the final pass that fell incomplete. On the other sideline, Falcons head coach Dan Quinn went into Sherman-like spasms, screaming for an interference flag. Two years ago, as Seattle’s defensive coordinator, Quinn was being bailed out by plays just like that.

But, hey, that’s football. Or something.