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Seattle Seahawks' Richard Sherman tees off on media

By Alex Butler

June 15 (UPI) -- All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman denied requesting a trade from the Seattle Seahawks Wednesday during minicamp.

He also had some targeted remarks for the media members responsible for reporting that claim back in May.

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"It's just a conversation they have every year," Sherman told reporters. "I guess this year, more people knew about it. It's a conversation they have every year — everybody's open, everybody's available."

"They just made sure I knew, and you guys found out. Pretty open about it. It was never a situation where anybody asked for it. It was just a conversation."

Seattle acknowledged that the franchise was involved in trade discussion regarding its defensive star this offseason, but nothing materialized. NFL Network reported that the New England Patriots were among the teams that inquired about Sherman.

Sherman also took issue with "anonymous sources" used in reports claiming that he had a sour relationship with quarterback Russell Wilson.

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"We know what the truth is," Sherman told reporters. "Obviously it doesn't matter what the truth is to the public because you got stories like this. People are like 'Oh my god, what's going on in the locker room?' It's like, 'Well, we've won a playoff game every year since then.'"

Seth Wickersham's ESPN article profiled the cornerback's relationship with Wilson and how the team regards the quarterback, before and after its Super Bowl XLIX loss to the New England Patriots.

"Because that's the way he's trying to sell the story, because there isn't any, but in order to sell a story you have to create a rhetoric, you have to create a story and that's all he did," Sherman said. "You're not talking about a team who hasn't made the playoffs in five years. You're not talking about a team that's missed the playoffs in any year. Maybe if you were talking about a team who had a great team, all these superstars and missed the playoffs, then you could say 'man, there must be something going wrong.' You're talking about a team that's made the playoffs every year but you have nothing else to talk about. You're in an offseason, you want to get your clicks, you want to make a crazy story so you create a rhetoric and nobody can stop you because you can say 'anonymous source said this' and say whatever you want. You can say 'anonymous source and unnamed person said this' and it's all good and nobody is going to question it."

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Sherman is in the third year of a four-year, $56 million pact with the Seahawks. The 29-year-old is due $11.4 million this season. Wilson, 28, posted the lowest quarterback rating of his career in 2016 and threw 21 touchdowns against a career-high 11 interceptions.

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