Richard Sherman Gets Paid in Full

08 May, 2014

Richard Sherman finally got his moment of being a top pick.

He stood on the stage with spotlights beaming directly on his bow tie. With the coach on one side and general manager on the other, Sherman held up a Seattle Seahawks jersey with his named across the back.

When Sherman entered the NFL as a fifth-rounder, there was no fanfare. That all came on Wednesday as Sherman became the latest piece of the Super Bowl champions to be locked up for the long term.

“I guess this is how it feels to be a first rounder,” Sherman said after signing a four-year contract extension with the Seahawks that will make him one of the highest-paid cornerbacks in NFL history.

The two-time, first-team All-Pro selection wrote the deal will pay him $57.4 million with $40 million guaranteed and will keep him in a Seahawks uniform through the 2018 season. The deal includes a reported $11 million signing bonus.

It’s a massive deal for a player who earned $375,000 in base salary as a rookie in 2011. But Sherman insisted the money will not change the approach or attitude that has made him one of the top defensive players in football and a magnet for attention.

“I’m still the guy scrapping for a spot. You never lose that mentality. You can take a ragged dog that has been living on the streets for 10 years and put him in a brand new house with steak and lobster every night and he’s still the ragged dog that you got off the streets,” Sherman said. “So I’m still the ragged dog off the street. That mentality isn’t something that I can change I don’t think. Even I wanted to, I can’t do it, It’s not a switch that I have.”

“I’d like to thank Paul Allen for anteing up,” Sherman said.

Sherman was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine and invited to the White House Correspondents’ dinner last weekend.

AP

Image Elaine Thompson/AP

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