PHOENIX — Brandon Browner signed with New England in free agency before the 2014 season, but as a member of Seattle’s secondary for three seasons in which the Seahawks came of age, he still has a special place in the hearts of the former teammates he and the Patriots will face in Super Bowl XLIX.
“He’s still a (Legion of Boom) member,” cornerback Richard Sherman said, referring to the nickname given to the Seahawks’ secondary while Browner was still in Seattle. “He’s still a great friend of ours. … It’s like playing your brothers — you play against your brothers, it’s going to be a fun game. At the end of the day, you hug, shake hands, and we’ll hang out this offseason. But this 60 minutes, it’ll be a fun battle and it’ll be a joy to play.
“We’re happy to see his success.”
Well apparently in football, like in real life, brothers don’t always play nice.
In an interview with ESPN’s Josina Anderson that aired Monday, Browner said his friendship with players like Sherman, free safety Earl Thomas and strong safety Kam Chancellor ends on the field. In fact, when asked about his injured former teammates — Sherman (elbow) and Thomas (shoulder) are both recovering from injuries suffered in the NFC championship game — Browner praised his teammates’ toughness, but he also suggested that his Patriot teammates should target those injuries.
“Those dudes are tough,” Browner told Anderson. “Watching the game, you see Sherman was holding that arm like he had a sling on. But at the end of the day, this is about the Super Bowl. I’m gonna tell my teammates ‘go hit that elbow, go hit that shoulder,’” Browner said. “Most definitely. Hit it, yeah. Try to break it if you can. You can be my best friend after the game but, at the end of the day, I know you want the Super Bowl just as bad as I do.”
Both Sherman and Thomas had press conferences Sunday, so neither was available to address Browner’s comments Monday, but several Seahawks players did.
Linebacker K.J. Wright wasn’t happy with those comments, saying, “We don’t play like that. We don’t go out there and try to hurt guys. And I don’t care if they do have an injury, we’re not going out there trying to hurt people, and especially guys you’re close to.”
Other players asked about Browner, however, didn’t seem bothered by what he said.
“B.B. is like a brother to us, man,” Chancellor said. “All I can say is God bless his heart. His heart, it tells everything. The man upstairs knows, so bless his heart.”
Receiver Doug Baldwin said that while Browner’s comments weren’t politically correct, they’re not that different than what any player might be thinking before playing the biggest game of their careers.
“I would expect nothing less,” Baldwin said. “This is the Super Bowl. What do you expect? I understand the fans want it to be classy, said publicly, and everything to be said politically correct, but that is the truth of the matter. We want this game just as much as they do and they want this game just as much as we do. I expect nothing less from Brandon Browner. We go after them in an aggressive fashion just as much as they are going to go after us. … You find whatever edge you can or whatever weakness your opponent has and you try to take advantage of it so you can take the upper hand.”
Carroll will talk to Lynch
Running back Marshawn Lynch has twice been fined by the NFL this season for grabbing his crotch to celebrate touchdown runs, and the league warned the Seahawks doing so again would result in a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Seattle head coach Pete Carroll was asked about the topic for the second straight day Monday, and said he would be talking to his star running back, while also going out of his way to point out that Lynch is a unique character.
“We’re just going to talk as we would to make sure that everything that comes into this game will be in alignment with how we want to go about the game,” Carroll said. “I would just tell you that it’s no different than when I would talk to other players about other issues and all kinds of situations that will come up. It’s pretty typical for us to do that, so we’ll address it.”
“We have a great understanding on our team that allows us to talk about whatever we have to talk about and to address all of the issues when we need to. But I’ll say this, and let me say it again, we still celebrate the uniqueness of our players. We celebrate their way that they see the world as they fit in with our football team.
“When things come in conflict with what we’re going to do as a team, we always address those things the best we can and hopefully we head off things that are going to hurt us and get in our way. We have to be really good at that. We have been over the years and hopefully we’ll do it again here.”
Sherman’s opinion
Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman made waves Sunday when he said the New England Patriots wouldn’t be punished for this deflated-ball scandal because of the close relationship between NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Patriots owner Robert Craft.
Asked about those comments a day later or if he would talk to Sherman about them, Carroll said, “That is what he said. Richard has an outlook that Richard owns and he had an opinion about something. I don’t think he knows the commissioner and Mr. Kraft very well. I don’t think they have a longstanding relationship, but he has an opinion of that and he expressed it.
“Whether I talk to him about it or not, he’s still going to have his opinion. We actually talk about most everything that is spoken, so eventually that will come up. I don’t think — we won’t share with you how that comes out and all, but we will talk about stuff. We always have.”
Asked if he agreed with Sherman’s assessment of the Goodell-Kraft relationship was accurate, Carroll said, “I don’t know that. It’s just Richard’s opinion. That’s the easy part of this, that’s what he thought.”
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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