- [Will] Michael Crabtree and Richard Sherman
had a unique beef.
It was brisk, yet it lingered.
It was highly publicized, but not fully understood.
It had ties to an incredible rivalry,
ties to one of their coaches,
and to a charity softball game.
You know, normal stuff.
(suspenseful music)
Most stories have an inciting incident
that hooks the audience and sets the main characters
off on a journey.
For Richard Sherman and Michael Crabtree,
that incident seemed to be the 2014 NFC Championship Game.
Sherman made a huge play at Crabtree's expense,
they shared a moment in the end zone,
and then Sherman bombastically spewed his thoughts
for everyone to hear about Crabtree:
- [Richard] When you try me with a sorry receiver
like Crabtree, that's the result you gon' get!
- [Will] And about himself:
- [Richard] Well, I'm the best corner in the game!
- [Will] On a major stage,
the audience witnessed the stories of this pair intertwine.
It propelled countless ships to sail off into the night,
excited by all the possibilities that could unfold
from this seemingly newfound beef.
But we all soon realized
that we had actually shown up late to this story.
The presumed inciting incident
may have actually been the climactic moment,
which left us scrambling to uncover
all the personal details of these individuals,
because it's unfair if we don't know
why this beef tastes so good.
So let's do a little stage setting.
The 49ers drafted Crabtree 10th overall in 2009.
The wide receiver struggled to live up to that billing
for the first few seasons,
but his fortunes began to change in 2011.
Jim Harbaugh came on as head coach
and things got serious,
like most-wins-since-their-last-
NFC-Championship-Game-appearance-serious.
Harbaugh also brought a bit of beef with him,
including one with his former player at Stanford,
Richard Sherman, which would impact things for Crabtree.
Sherman reached the NFL at the same time as Harbaugh,
but with a little less fanfare.
He quickly began to outplay
his fifth round draft price though,
and helped establish the Legion of Boom.
Sherman was a physical corner on a stacked secondary
primed to terrorize the league for years to come.
Now, this isn't Harbaugh's story,
but in a way the bad blood he had with Sherman
helped lay a foundation for today's duo.
Sherman entered the league with a chip on his shoulder,
something that he blamed Harbaugh for
by giving him poor performance reviews ahead of the draft.
But considering one party's on the field
while the other is on the sideline,
it paved the way for some tangential beef.
As of this moment, it's generally frowned upon
for a player to physically go after an opposing coach,
so the 49er players that Sherman faced
would have to serve as the physical outlet
for any of the cornerback's frustrations.
It would make sense that if one of those receivers
happened to be a former first round pick like Crabtree
that he might receive a little extra heat
regardless of any additional reasons for ill will which...
Well, we're getting there.
But in Sherman's first couple of seasons,
the 49ers were a couple steps ahead of Seattle.
The Seahawks were definitely closing the gap,
but for San Francisco,
not only had they made the NFC Championship Game
in Harbaugh's first year,
a season later they reached the Super Bowl,
and Crabtree played a major part in that,
easily having a career year.
He nearly even brought the Lombardi Trophy
back to San Francisco,
but some questionably physical play
from Baltimore went unnoticed.
Thankfully for Crabtree, if there's ever been a cure
for the heartache of losing a Super Bowl, it's softball.
Now, we can safely assume Larry Fitzgerald
had perfectly good intentions
when he invited Crabtree and Sherman
to play in his charity event.
However, he accidentally created a space
for their beef-troduction.
There are a handful of accounts for how things went down
during that 2013 offseason.
Some anonymous sources say that Sherman rolled up,
said hello to everyone around Crabtree,
offered a handshake which the receiver declined,
and then Sherman tried to fight him.
Others told a similar chain of events,
just after Crabtree declined the handshake,
he wanted to start a fight.
The most in-depth report came from Willie McGinest.
Not saying this is the most accurate,
just that it paints a more complete picture.
Apparently there had been some trash talk
previously between the pair,
which Crabtree hadn't forgotten about.
Because of that, he had no intention of being cordial.
After declining the handshake,
Crabtree kept talking, things got a little heated,
and Sherman didn't back down,
but wanted a non-charity-centric setting
for whatever would come next.
So basically everyone agreed
that a handshake had been refused
and they nearly fought,
but seeing as how they'd face off
twice in the regular season
while likely vying for the top spot in the division,
there would be plenty of time to reheat the beef.
The fun part, though, came a few days later,
when Crabtree tore his achilles.
Okay, maybe fun is the wrong word, but here's my point:
Crabtree missed significant time,
and therefore they had to bottle up that animosity.
And once Crabtree returned in December of 2013,
a shift had taken place between the teams.
Seattle sat in the driver's seat for the division,
so with the 49ers needing to make up ground,
when the teams faced off in week 14,
individual matchups weren't the focus for our beefers.
The most notable thing from this showdown
was that the 49ers won.
It was one of six straight wins
to go into the playoffs pretty hot.
From there they snuck by the Packers,
cruised past the Panthers,
and for the third time in as many years,
found themselves playing for a trip to the Super Bowl.
Their opponents this time?
Huh, imagine that.
Everyone say the potential for fireworks,
but no one truly knew how big the fireworks could be,
especially since they continued
to not speak directly about the other.
But then the moment:
a close, raucous game came down to the final seconds.
San Francisco needed six to tie, seven to win.
With 30 seconds left from the 18,
Colin Kaepernick went for it all on first down
and looked Crabtree's way,
which also meant he looked Sherman's way.
The corner batted the ball up into the air,
Malcolm Smith grabbed it,
and the Seahawks snuffed out the threat.
Then the beef came into view.
Sherman chased down a dejected Crabtree
and offered his hand.
Crabtree offered his hand in return,
but to Sherman's face.
If you're feeling sorry for Sherman
that his handshakes keep getting rejected,
well, don't worry about him.
After a few Russell Wilson kneel-downs,
the cameras found Sherman.
First, Fox Deportes simply said,
"Hey, you guys did it,"
to which Sherman responded with a level of intensity
that makes me question his understanding
of what microphones do.
- Hey, you don't try
the best corner in the league in the crunch,
especially with a mediocre receiver like Crabtree!
He's weak!
- [Will] He then went and gave
a more publicized interview with Erin Andrews.
Sherman restated his feelings about himself:
- Well, I'm the best corner in the game!
- [Will] His feelings about a certain opponent:
- With a sorry receiver like Crabtree!
- [Will] But he added an extra layer to things.
He said, "Don't you ever talk about me."
When Andrews asked him to expand on that,
asked who was talking about him,
after a pause, he said, "Crabtree."
This moment, both the play and the interview, blew up.
It felt so fresh and exciting,
people wanted to know more,
and it gave idiots something to shout about
to make sure they could still be heard.
Folks immediately found Crabtree,
who gave the mildest props to Sherman.
He pointed out that Sherman
hadn't done much else in the game,
which is kind of a weird knock given the circumstances.
Like, sure, he made the play of the game,
but if he's so good,
why didn't he just win it for them earlier?
It was in the days that followed
that we learned about the softball game,
the snubbed handshake, the original bad blood.
And when the Seahawks did what the Niners failed to do,
winning a Super Bowl two weeks later,
it made sure the topic wouldn't go anywhere just yet.
Sherman referenced Crabtree in his autographs.
He made a T-shirt to commemorate the play.
He even went on Discovery Channel's
TV show "American Muscle"
and immediately Crabtree became the focus.
- It's a little some'n to it, you know.
It's much more of just I don't like the dude,
you know what I'm sayin'?
- [Will] He very calmly added
that the dislike went deep enough
that Sherman wanted to see Crabtree
for the rest of his career and choke him out.
Crabtree didn't wanna get into that though.
He and Sherman were different.
Crabtree let his play do the talking,
which again, circumstances, weird flex.
But anyway, according to Sherman,
Crabtree let his mouth do some talking as well.
Whether this went back to the charity event
or something on the field,
Sherman didn't expand on it,
just left a touch of mystery to their relationship.
But mystery or not, at that point
their beef had blown up for everyone following.
It reached such heights that even Taiwanese animators
put together an explainer,
and felt like the only way to correctly show this beef
was with extremism and absurdity.
I've been looking for confirmation though
that the bathroom scene was at least
rooted in some level of reality,
because it's amazing.
The trouble with this beef though
was the gap between these players
and these teams continued to grow.
The Seahawks agreed with Sherman that he was the best
and made him the highest-paid cornerback in the league.
The Niners swapped success
for gossip-generating performances.
As San Francisco sunk to .500
and Seattle reached back-to-back Super Bowls,
both of Sherman's partners in beef were suddenly gone.
Crabtree moved on and spent three years with Oakland,
another in Baltimore,
and never crossed paths with Sherman at either stop.
He did find a new cornerback to get into it with though,
so at least he had company.
Ahead of the 2019 season,
it looked like this beef would have one last hurrah.
In a move that would've been shocking
just a few years earlier,
Sherman switched sides of the rivalry in 2018.
Then, leading up to the following season,
Crabtree returned to the division.
He dodged questions about the prospect
of facing Sherman again, but in the end,
the showdown remained as just a question of what if.
Sherman's move to San Francisco
did give the beef some new flavors though.
He naturally got countless questions about the rivalry
and spoke openly about his relationship with Harbaugh.
He admitted that his boisterous rant,
even though he called out Crabtree,
hadn't really been targeted at Crabtree.
The call-out was mainly intended for Harbaugh.
Crabtree just kinda got caught in the crossfire.
Now, that obviously isn't to say
there was nothing going on between the players.
Even in 2020,
Sherman, in a fairly confusing way,
said that his relationship with Crabtree
was all over the place.
Boiled down: good thoughts or bad thoughts,
Sherman wasn't thinking about his former foe.
Exactly how much beef these two had, or have,
is hard to quantify.
It's deeper than just two guys
who got tired of facing each other.
It certainly didn't help
that Sherman fueled his play with spite
and Crabtree's head coach
gave Sherman plenty of fuel to use.
But had Crabtree's time in San Francisco
continued once Harbaugh moved on,
it would have been interesting to see
where this relationship could've gone,
what could've happened if the receiver
didn't also serve as a beef proxy for his head coach.
Hell, maybe that handshake could've even been completed,
or maybe they would've just found
something else to do with their hands.
But as quickly as we learned of it,
the beef faded away.
Whatever words passed between these guys
were never meant for us to hear.
We just got to sit back,
enjoy whatever they decided to serve us,
and no matter how good it tasted,
the recipe would stay secret.