In March 2018, Richard Sherman and the San Francisco 49ers agreed to a contract.
Sherman had just been released by the Seattle Seahawks, where he’d spent the first seven seasons of his NFL career. He was also just a few weeks away from his 30th birthday and was coming off a season-ending ruptured Achilles — a scary injury for a cornerback — and two surgeries to fix it.
And he didn’t have an agent; a vice president of the NFL Players Association executive committee and a union rep for his teammates, Sherman has long advocated that players’ use their voice and power for their own good.