Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman responded to a controversial tweet from the wife of Bills kicker Dan Carpenter on Wednesday by calling her apology "BS."
Carpenter's wife, Kaela, tweeted, "I know what we do on the farm when a male can't control his own rage." She attached a picture of a device designed for castration. Later, she tweeted a statement saying her tweet was "an attempt at humor" and "never intended to be about race."
"It's not surprising at all," Sherman said on Wednesday. "This is the day and age you've got the Ku Klux Klan running around. People say whatever they want and there's very little consequence. For her to say something like that and then have a BS apology like she did, it's just the way of the world. I don't let it bother me. It's something I'm very used to. It's just the way people are, the way people are raised."
Sherman was asked if that saddened him.
"It's more disappointing than anything," he said. "It's also something that's understandable. Ignorance has always been in the world. The core of this country has been built off slavery and people owning people. So anytime you understand that's the core principles of the way a nation was built then you have some kind of, I guess, sympathy for it."
Sherman jumped offsides at the end of the first half while trying to block a field goal. He ran into Carpenter at the end of the play, which led to a hailstorm of controversy about whether he should have been flagged for roughing the kicker or unnecessary roughness (He was called just for the offsides, and after a series of strange events, the Bills eventually missed the field goal to end the half). NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino later said Sherman should have been called for unnecessary roughness.
Sherman explained his position on the play, noting that the Bills were being allowed to attempt the field goal and that if they had made it, the penalty would have been declined and the Bills given three points had the kick been good.
"There was no whistle," Sherman said. "The league goes back and hindsights everything and says this and says that because they want to appease the fans. But I know the rule book, and I know exactly what I was doing on the play."
"I knew they got the offsides," Sherman said later, "but they were giving them a free play. I was just trying to stop the ball from being kicked. I knew what a free play was. If they kick the ball, they still get three points whether it's offsides or not so you gotta stop the play and make them kick it again."
