Darrelle Revis didn’t have words of congratulations for cornerback Richard Sherman after the San Francisco 49ers booked their ticket to Super Bowl LIV against the Kansas City Chiefs.
After the 49ers beat the Green Bay Packers in the NFC title game, Revis ripped into Sherman for his style of play, which involves playing in a zone on one side of the defense. Revis was notorious for playing on an island in single man-to-man coverage against the best receivers in the NFL. That’s not Sherman’s style, which apparently doesn’t sit well with Revis.
“Fear of getting beat in man to man coverage,” Revis wrote on Twitter on Sunday night after the game. “Every snap every play. The fact that he doesn’t travel as a cornerback is lame. Except the challenge as the best and shut Adams down the entire game. Do it for the game of football. Stop hiding a cover 3 zone.”
Revis and Sherman have exchanged barbs on Twitter before. They went back and forth about the quality of the other cornerback’s play in 2013. Sherman was still an up-and-coming talent at the time. Revis, meanwhile, was a well-established Pro Bowler, who had fallen into a rough patch with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He would join the New England Patriots for 2014, and rejuvenate his career while winning a Super Bowl against Sherman’s Seahawks.
Revis is simply reiterating the longstanding knock on Sherman. It’s like one quarterback calling another a system signal-caller. He has some limitations, and his system hides them. Sherman operates well in a particular kind of defense — but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL at one point.
