Richard Sherman Has Put Himself on the Spot to Complete a Complicated 2016 Story

Richard Sherman will write a compelling story about Richard Sherman on Saturday in Atlanta.

It will be a tale of triumph or tragedy, an epic about passionate leadership or a cautionary tale about anger and ego run amuck. Whichever direction the story takes, it's Sherman's tale to tell.

He writes his own stories now. He's boycotting the media, sort of. He threatened to go full Marshawn Lynch at the end of the regular season, itemizing the sports media's many real and imaginary sins to The MMQB's Robert Klemko before shutting down on the local press.

He then spoke at length to reporters after last week's Detroit Lions game about many topics, including his refusal to speak to reporters. Sherman says more after a vow of silence than most players say on Super Bowl media day. He wouldn't last long in a cloistered monastery.

So call it a "Boycott Lite." Sherman is a shareholder in The Players' Tribune and a good writer. He'll speak when he chooses to, but he reserves the right to pen Sherman-on-Sherman columns that allow the world to decide whether he is a reliable first-person narrator.

But it's all about the plot, not the prose. He has spun a strange tale for the last four months. He faces his most dangerous antagonist Saturday, and he has only three chapters left to stick the climax.

Sherman's gradual transition this season from slightly edgy babyface to out-and-out heel began when the Seattle Seahawks hosted the Atlanta Falcons in Week 6.

While his defensive teammates were coughing up a 17-3 lead with a pair of blown-coverage touchdowns, Sherman threw the kind of tantrum that gets preschoolers a timeout and Odell Beckham Jr. a weeklong engagement on the back page of the New York tabloids.

He slammed his helmet to the ground. He screamed in defensive coordinator Kris Richard's face. Michael Bennett, Bobby Wagner and other veteran teammates took turns subduing him.

The Seahawks retook the lead and won the game 26-24, thanks in part to a no-call when Sherman grabbed archenemy Julio Jones' hand as both leaped for a fourth-down pass. Sherman responded to questions about the no-call by claiming Jones deserved to be penalized for a shove to the face earlier in the play and that the NFL purposely edited the highlight footage to make him look bad.

You can't make this stuff up. Or if you can, you should be producing WWE SmackDown.

The Sherman vs. Jones feud has a four-year history, predating the Sherman vs. Michael Crabtree feud that frothed to a head in the 2013 NFC Championship Game. Cocky cornerbacks and receivers are the NFL's trash-talk ambassadors. Their antics add comic relief and relatability to football games that too often play out like grim, procedural robot battles when everyone else is spouting no-nonsense cliches.

Sherman vs. Seahawks is a new development, however, and it escalated when he lashed out at head coach Pete Carroll and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell after a near-interception from the 1-yard line against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 15.

"I wasn't going to let them continue to do that," Sherman said after the game. "I was making sure Pete knew that we're not comfortable with you throwing the ball at the 1."

"Us vs. them" rhetoric about your own coaches is different than us vs. them rhetoric about opponents, referees, replay editors or even whichever kid defender was supposed to cover Levine Toilolo. Sherman even coyly suggested he brought his coaches around to his way of thinking.

"It went great. They ran the ball the next play, got stuffed, and then they figured out a way to get into the end zone." That way they figured out was by passing, which is just what Sherman wasn't going to let his bosses continue to do.

With even Carroll on the enemies list, the local media didn't have a chance. But one idle threat to ruin a reporter's career, a Twitter apology, some skipped press conferences and a lecture about journalistic ethics? Shoot, we got off easy.

Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images

Sherman's story has fallen back on some predictable tropes this season:

• He gets into a heated argument with some non-opponent.
• Coaches and teammates close ranks to celebrate the passion and competitiveness that caused him to briefly go cuckoo bananas.

Most of the media gives Sherman almost unprecedented leeway when repackaging the events for next-day consumption. Even the most bellicose midday talk-show hosts bang "Sherman Was Right" tom-toms.

Great leaders SHOULD lose their minds when Levine Toilolo scores a 46-yard touchdown! Bevell should be yelled at for throwing from the 1-yard line. Doesn't he remember Super Bowl 49? Sherman went after some beat writer who makes 1/100th of his salary? Well, we reporters are sometimes a bunch of stinkers!

It has been a strange journey—or maybe a slippery slope—for many of us who respect Sherman and other athletes who speak their minds. One day, we're chuckling about how he called Thursday Night Football an "absolute poopfest."

The next, we're tying ourselves in knots to explain how it's OK for a defender to publicly challenge offensive play-calling just weeks before the playoffs. No one dares suggest the sideline freak-outs became a dreaded d-word (distraction), even though the Falcons game was followed by a tie with the Arizona Cardinals and a loss to the New Orleans Saints, and the Rams game followed by a loss to the Cardinals and a scare at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers.

Sherman seems determined to battle with his staunchest allies: teammates, a 65-year-old millennial of a head coach who handles him like America's highest-paid guidance counselor, officials who bury their pass-interference flags deep in their pockets upon arrival in Seattle, a press pool wearing kid gloves. Everyone makes excuses for Sherman. And the next incident is a little more extreme than the last.

It helps that the Seahawks won both of this year's Sherman Rage games; winning justifies everything, according to the logic of weekday sports television. It also helps that Sherman has played excellent football amid the general deterioration of the Legion of Boom.

The charming insubordinate has to keep producing results to remain charming. If Sherman wants to be Wolverine, go berserk and fight constantly with the other X-Men, he must hack and slash through more than his share of battles.

He did just that, though the Seahawks were helped by a late-season gauntlet of two rookie quarterbacks, two teams in mid-coach-replacement mode and a Carolina Panthers team more addicted to drama than they were, followed by a playoff opponent at the end of a free-fall. It's easy to recast Sherman's fits as firebrand motivation when the opponents are rolling over in front of the Seahawks. The margin for error shrinks when a team reaches the boss levels.

Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images

Which brings us to this chapter in the story that Sherman is writing.

This is the adversary he chose long ago, when he began his war of words with Jones. It's the battlefield he selected when he made himself the top story of the last meeting with the Falcons. This is the game that decides whether the Seahawks are Super Bowl contenders or slow-fading playoff also-rans, and what Sherman's role has been in either scenario.

This is not a prefabricated, media-created story like the New York Giants' party-boat situation. This is the story of a player who freaks out at coaches and teammates on the sidelines during games. Behavior like that has an impact on a football team. It's usually bad. If it's good in this case, Sherman needs to show us, not tell us.

His brief media boycott brought back memories of something Roddy White said in spring 2013, when the defender and receiver were beefing their way through an offseason. "When things are going good, he's all good. When things ain't going his way, he has nothing to say," White said on NFL Network's Top 100 Reaction Show.

It's a lot easier to tell the story of your successes than to admit your mistakes. Writing a Players' Tribune column about the Seahawks season that got away isn't as easy as it sounds. But silence in the face of defeat can be deafening.

So Sherman the player needs to simplify the storyline for Sherman the writer: dominate Jones without penalty controversies, lead the Seahawks to victory and do it without sideline drama. Otherwise, the story is going to get away from him.

Mike Tanier covers the NFL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @MikeTanier.