5 NFL players who will fall off a cliff in 2020 season
By John Buhler
Scouting Report. CB. San Francisco 49ers. 42. Pick Analysis. Richard Sherman. 2. player
It didn’t take much, but last year was enough to ensure us all that Richard Sherman will eventually be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The face of the Seattle Seahawks’ “Legion of Boom” needed that fifth Pro Bowl and that one last deep playoff run to put him over the top. He achieved both by helping the San Francisco 49ers reaching Super Bowl 54 down in Miami.
Sherman will be entering his age-32 season out of Stanford in 2020. San Francisco may very well be the favorites to get back to Super Bowl 55 down in Tampa this year, or the 49ers could just as easily fall victim to the ever-popular Super Bowl hangover. All we know is in the last NFL game we saw Sherman got burnt like toast by the Kansas City Chiefs receiving corps repeatedly.
A 10th NFL season with a five-year prime from 2012 to 2016 with Seattle is sufficient to get Sherman a gold jacket and a bronze bust in Canton, Ohio at some point. However, we’re more likely to see him play like he did in 2017 with Seattle pre-injury or in 2018 during his first year with the 49ers than we are to see him recreate the success of last season.
Sherman may prove us all wrong with a great sixth Pro Bowl season in year 10 out of Stanford, lead the 49ers to Lombardi Trophy No. 6 and retire on top of the world as a two-time Super Bowl champion. That would be a story book ending to an illustrious career for a former fifth-round pick. Unless you’re Peyton Manning or John Elway, the NFL doesn’t care about fairy tales.