‘Thank you for helping win championships’: Hawks cut Sherman

“You mad bro?”

Richard Sherman’s famous query of Tom Brady following a Seattle Seahawks’ win over the Patriots six years ago is now a question for the entire Pacific Northwest.

Sherman is gone.

Why? Yes, money talks. But money also walks.

As anticipated, the Seahawks released their superstar cornerback on Friday after 117 games, 111 starts, seven seasons, four Pro Bowls, three All-Pro selections, two Super Bowls, the franchise’s only NFL championship — and growth into one of the most successful and outspoken personalities in Seattle sports history.

The only NFL team he’s known, the team that transformed him from a ticked-off, overlooked fifth-round draft choice into a national superstar, saves Sherman’s $11 million in base pay for 2018 against this year’s salary cap.

“I would like to say thank you to the Seattle Seahawks organization for taking a chance on a kid that was overlooked by many. For that I am forever grateful,” Sherman wrote in a goodbye letter he posted on his social-media accounts Friday evening.

“… It has been (an) amazing ride from beginning to end, with memories to last a lifetime.”

Sherman told the NFL Network: “They wanted the financial flexibility going into free agency but expressed that they wanted me to return and will be in contact.”

But that’s unlikely. A four-time Pro Bowl player and Super Bowl champion at the second-toughest position to play in sports, behind quarterback, will likely attract in free agency that begins Wednesday a rich offer the cap-strapped Seahawks cannot and will not match. Even one who turns 30 in three weeks and is coming off surgeries to the Achilles tendons in both legs.

The franchise- and region-rattling move is not just because of Sherman’s age and recent injury history. Foremost, the now-fully-transitioning Seahawks need cap space to make other foundational moves necessary this offseason — fixing the rushing offense, getting more pass-rushers, and so on — to return to the playoffs. They missed those this winter for the first time in six years.

Sherman’s cap charge became the team’s primary target to increase spending flexibility. He was scheduled to have the second-highest base salary on the team this year; only franchise quarterback Russell Wilson at $15.5 million is higher.

And the Seahawks weren’t going to release Wilson.

“Thank you for helping win championships, shape our culture and define success in Seattle,” the Seahawks said in a statement announcing the decision.

“We love you and your unwavering competitiveness, confidence and fierce passion for football and life. For that, you will always be a Hawk!”

The Seahawks gave indications they may have considered keeping Sherman at a much more team-friendly cap charge for this year — that is, at a substantially reduced salary. But the proud, ever-confident Sherman would have had to become a different man overnight to agree to a sizable pay cut in a contract year, without finding out what he may be able to get from another team first.

Sherman was officially waived with a designation of failed physical. A league source confirmed to The News Tribune that Sherman failed an exit physical examination players routinely get at the end of each season. His physical was a couple months after a torn Achilles tendon that ended his 2017 — and it turns out Seattle tenure — in early November. He recently had a second Achilles surgery on the other foot and has been wearing a boot.

Per article 45 of the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with its players, Sherman is entitled to up to $1.15 million in injury-protection payments from the Seahawks for being released after failing a team physical. Seattle will not have to pay that money or have that as a cap charge this year if he signs with another team.

Sherman is now a free agent, free to negotiate while representing himself without an agent, with any team to play for it instead of Seattle in 2018.

Both sides had been pushing for quick resolution, before the end of this week, after Sherman came to the realization the Seahawks weren’t going to pay him the $11 million they had been scheduled to give him this year.

The Seahawks needed to know how much cap space and thus buying power they have for their many needs ahead of the free-agent negotiating period. That begins Monday. The buying market opens on Wednesday.

Sherman started every Seahawks game at left cornerback from Oct. 30, 2011, midway through his rookie season, until Nov. 9, 2017, the night he tore his Achilles in Arizona in what was likely his final game for Seattle. His five full seasons as a starter — 2012 through 2016 — remain the best five years in franchise history.

His long arms, smarts and preparation to the point of knowing what the offense was going to do made him the definition of a shutdown cornerback. Sherman effectively eliminated one-third of the field; NFL and Super Bowl most valuable player Aaron Rodgers simply refused to throw his way in Packers-Seahawks games. Seattle’s other 10 defenders had to defend only two-thirds of the field, and the Seahawks went to the playoffs in every one of those five years. Sherman was an All-Pro in 2012, ‘13 and ‘14. The latter two of those seasons ended with the Seahawks in the Super Bowl.

He was a charismatic, at-times outspoken voice in a Seahawks locker room full of personalities. He went up to Brady in the middle of the field after intercepting him and winning a game over New England in October 2012 and famously asked the legendary, champion quarterback, “You mad bro?”

In November 2014 Sherman and good friend Doug Baldwin, a teammate of his at Stanford and with the Seahawks, mocked the NFL for its media and marketing policies during a press conference.

During the 2016 season Sherman dressed for a press conference in a long, black Gryffindor robe, maroon trim, a maroon tie with gold, diagonal stripes, black-rimmed eye glasses and waving a wand a few days before Halloween.

He went full Harry Potter, theme music on his phone and all, three days after he played all 95 snaps of an overtime tie at Arizona. He was left shaking and unable to walk from dehydration and exhaustion in the locker room that night.

Sherman was a leader on the field and off it for teammates. He mentored and tutored Shaquill Griffin into a starting cornerback opposite him as a rookie last season. Sherman spent hours during and after practices working with Seattle’s third-round pick from Central Florida, even after Sherman’s season-ending injury.

Now it will be Griffin, not Sherman, starting at corner for the Seahawks in 2018.

The 2013 season ended with Sherman leading the NFL with eight interceptions. His tipped pass away from San Francisco’s Michael Crabtree and into the hands of Seahawks teammate Malcolm Smith for an interception in the end zone in the final seconds of the NFC championship game sent Seattle to Super Bowl 48. Then Sherman and his Seattle defense smashed record-setting legend Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos 43-8 to win the Seahawks’ first NFL championship.

Right now for the Seahawks and the entire Northwest, that seems like a lifetime ago.

Seattle’s undeniably transitioning team also waived veteran defensive back Jeremy Lane on Friday. That long-awaited move plus Sherman’s exit and this week’s trade of Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Bennett to Philadelphia have created $17.95 million in salary-cap space for this year. The team had just over $12 million in space at the beginning of this week.

Now, the Seahawks can be bonafide shoppers in the free-agent market. They may now be able to re-sign defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson to keep him from leaving next week; they’ve been negotiating to keep him even before freeing up this money. All-Pro safety Earl Thomas has had his chances of the Seahawks giving him a contract extension past 2018 skyrocket with the team’s seismic moves this week.

But no matter what happens next, the Seahawks will be left with a gaping hole on the back, left corner of its once-superior, vaunted defense. Not to mention in the center of the locker room — and fan base.

“To the 12s, you have been nothing short of amazing,” Sherman wrote in his online goodbye. “The support you have shown me on and off the field has been invaluable to my family and I. Truly appreciate each and every one of you for showing up every Sunday to cheer us on.

“As this chapter comes to a close, I am looking forward to what the future holds.”