© Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Of all the 49ers’ defensive issues in 2018, Richard Sherman was rarely involved.
Despite turning 30 last year and recovering from an Achilles rupture, Sherman was the shutdown corner of yesteryear with Seattle. According to Pro Football Focus, he allowed one reception per 20 coverage snaps, the third-best mark in the league, in the 14 games he played. Opposing offenses regularly avoided Sherman altogether.
As it turns out, he did that on about 80 percent health, Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer wrote in his Monday column.
“I’m told that Richard Sherman was at no better than 80% last year, and he only got there after significant improvement in early November, right around when the Niners played the Giants. As such, San Francisco expects a much-improved version of the former All-Pro, which would give the roster a boost at a position where Ahkello Witherspoon struggled last year and Jason Verrett was added last month. Another thing that should help: Sherman had surgery to have sutures, initially put in as part of the rehab process, removed from his heel after the season, and he’s felt a lot better since.”
Sherman tore his Achilles on Nov. 9 of the 2017 season. He did not fully return to football activities until a couple days into 2018 training camp, his first with the 49ers. The team monitored his workload, regularly giving him days off and sitting him until the third preseason game to ensure he entered Week 1 at his healthiest, relatively speaking.
Sherman played well in the first three games of the season. He sat in Week 4, a 29-27 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, due to a sore heel, a lingering effect of his Achilles tear. Fast forward to Week 6, a 39-10 loss against the Los Angeles Rams, and Sherman sat again, but that was it. His only bad performance of the season came against Tampa Bay, where he allowed 113 receiving yards, which accounted for about one-third of his yardage allowed all season.
Once the 2018 season concluded, Sherman admitted he played through some pain.
“Some games I would feel better than others, and I would feel like myself. And other games, you are kind of battering your way through it because pain is an inhibitor that you sometimes can’t overcome,” Sherman said. “Even if you overcome it mentally, your body isn’t able to move like it wants to move. But for the most part, I was able to move like I wanted to move and get to my spots.”
All things considered, Sherman’s first year with the 49ers went well. No, he did not record an interception for the first time in eight NFL seasons. But he impacted the team elsewhere. Defensive coordinator Robert Saleh said Sherman’s “veteran calmness” was instrumental among a 49ers secondary comprised of players with little-to-no NFL experience in the final weeks of the season. The rest of that group remains somewhat in flux. There will be open competitions at the right cornerback and safety positions ahead of the upcoming season.
Sherman, meanwhile, returns as the group’s anchor. He said he looks forward to resuming his normal offseason training, which wasn’t the case at this time a year ago.
“I think that’s going to be the biggest thing for me: to have an offseason,” Sherman said in December. “To work hard, push my body, and let my muscles and tendons and ligaments recover like they should and strengthen like they should. Give myself a chance to do the drills to pull the sled like I normally would and get my body back to where it normally is.”