Why it doesn’t make sense for the Falcons to trade for Richard Sherman

I want to acknowledge up front that Richard Sherman is a great player, by all accounts a fiercely loyal teammate, and the kind of player a lot of teams would like to have. If you were going to list the 10 or 15 best cornerbacks in football, Sherman would be on that list, and for most people he’d be near the top.

That is probably why so many otherwise rational Falcons fans have entertained the notion that Atlanta might trade for him. To be clear, there isn’t a universe in which a trade for Sherman would make sense for this football team, given the assets they’d need to surrender (either a high-round draft pick, a quality player, or both), the team’s relative strength at the cornerback position, and the amount of money Sherman makes and is going to make. But I still understand the allure.

The Desmond Trufant extension should quell the last of this talk, but just to put the nail in the coffin, here’s why a Richard Sherman trade makes no sense.

• It will be expensive
• It’s unclear where he’d play unless you traded Desmond Trufant or Robert Alford for him
• It would be dumb to trade Desmond Trufant or Robert Alford for him
• It’s a dumb idea
• The Falcons would never do it

Great, glad we had this talk. Please do not ever mention a Richard Sherman trade again.