Richard Sherman disappoints during Amazon halftime show

Jan 27, 2020; Miami, FL, USA; San Francisco 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman during Super Bowl LIV Opening Night at Marlins Park. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Richard Sherman proved to be a disappointment during Amazon’s halftime show of the Week 4 “Thursday Night Football” game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Miami Dolphins.

The story of the first half was Tua Tagovailoa being taken off the field on a stretcher after suffering a clear concussion in the second quarter. The circumstances surrounding Tagovailoa’s concussion make it a major story.

Tagovailoa was controversially cleared to return to the Dolphins’ Week 3 win over the Bills only four days earlier. The NFLPA wants an investigation into the circumstances for how Tagovailoa was cleared.

Given the murky situation in Week 3 on Sunday, there were some who felt Tagovailoa should not have been playing on Thursday or returned for the second half of the Bills game. So when Tagovailoa suffered the concussion on Thursday night, many immediately criticized the Dolphins and NFL for the way they handled the young quarterback.

The people who didn’t criticize the team or league were all on Amazon’s halftime show. In fact, they didn’t even bring up Tagovailoa’s Week 3 situation as part of the context for the Week 4 concussion.

What’s extremely surprising is that Sherman was silent on the matter at a time when many people were thinking about it or could have benefitted from the important context.

Sherman was an outspoken player throughout his career and remains an extreme player advocate. In 2016, he wrote an article declaring that he hated “Thursday Night Football” because of how brutal it is on player health.

How could this same man then not even bring up during the halftime show that Tagovailoa playing in the game — especially on the short week — might have been a bad idea given the circumstances?

The Amazon halftime crew is not naiive. They know what happened with Tagovailoa. It was mentioned in the pregame show. For them to completely ignore the matter during halftime seems to indicate they were given instructions to avoid making the league and Dolphins look bad.

Sherman targeted the NFL as hard as anyone during his playing career. Now that he is indirectly working for the league, he’s showing how hypocritical he is by backing off.