Richard Sherman Rails Against Fantasy Football After Chris Carson Injury

Richard Sherman, like many NFL players, doesn’t care about your fantasy football team. And he’s not afraid to say it.

After the Seattle Seahawks’ blowout win over the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday night, Sherman was asked about teammate Chris Carson, who suffered a brutal-looking ankle injury in the fourth quarter. Instead of focusing on the injury, though, the Seahawks cornerback launched into a lengthy rant against fantasy football owners, whom he believes take an impersonal view of injuries.

“This is really devastating,” Sherman said, via the Seattle Times. “I think a lot of people, a lot of fans out there have looked at players less like people because of fantasy football and things like that.

“You go and say, ‘Oh man, this guy got hurt.’ But you aren?t thinking, ‘Hey man, this guy got hurt, he?s really physically hurt and he is going to take some time to recover and it?s probably going to affect his mental state and now he has a long rigorous rehab.’ You are thinking, ‘Oh man, he’s messing up my fantasy team.’

“(The players) don?t care about how it affects your fantasy team because they are really players — this is real life. This is real life and this is their real job that is affecting their well-being. Now your fantasy team may not win and hey, guess what? You?ll live the next day. This is their well-being. They may not ever get another shot. They may never get another down, another play.”

Sherman isn’t the first player to express his frustration with fantasy football, and he has a point: NFL players aren’t statistics, and we shouldn’t dehumanize them or send them angry tweets over something that’s much bigger than our fantasy team.

Then again, fantasy football is a big driver of viewership and interest in the NFL, and we’d like to think people can both root for their fantasy teams and be respectful of what NFL players go through.

Thumbnail photo via Joe Nicholson/USA TODAY Sports Images