Richard Sherman may not need Tommy John surgery, after all; other Seahawks injury updates

After battling through what now appear to be pretty major injuries in the Super Bowl, Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, and Kam Chancellor all face the prospect of having off-season surgery.

It was originally reported that Sherman would need Tommy John surgery to repair ligaments in his elbow, but now Seahawks' head coach is backing off his earlier confirmation on that. Carroll said, on Monday -- "From what I understand that is accurate. I just heard that as well. I'm just telling you, his will to play through that in this game a couple of weeks ago and take it all the way through this game, never wavered. Never wavered."

Carroll said Tuesday that he "might have been misled" about the Tommy John report. He noted that now Sherman will wait until after his son is born and then seek further opinions on what route to take. "He's not a pitcher," said Carroll. "And he's not a left-hander. Sherm might not have to have that kind of surgery. If he was a thrower he would."

The crazy thing about Seattle's Super Bowl XLIX performance is that it now seems that three-fourths of the Legion of Boom weren't letting on about just how serious their injuries really were. On some level, I knew that Earl was hurting, and would be somewhat limited in terms of range of motion, and that Sherman would be limited in what he could do with his left arm, but I never thought that Kam's knee injury was that serious.

As it turns out, according to Carroll, they played through some real issues. "We'll find out all of [what was going on with Kam's knee] as we go on," he said. "He may have had an earlier injury from years past, which he did wear a brace at times earlier in his career, that may indicate why he was able to come back so fast, maybe some of the damage was from before. But he had a hurt knee and got really banged hard on it. He just woke up the next morning with all of the resolve and all of the prayers that were sent his way and he was ready to go. And then he woke up the next morning on Sunday morning and said ‘I can do this.' And they strapped him up and he went out there and played. It was a superhuman thing that he pulled off."

"For Earl and Sherm to make it through this game and play and have the problems they have is one thing notable," Carroll said on Monday. "For Kam Chancellor to play in this game, it's like super human stuff. He shouldn't have been able to go."

"It's courageous and as clear as Earl was and as Kam was when it came time," Carroll repeated on Tuesday. "That was a heroic thing that those guys did to play and all three of those guys might wind up getting fixed up here. They all knew it and they wanted to play for their teammates and they did exactly that and did it in great fashion."

Respect.

"He's going to have surgery. He had a really difficult break. They have to wait a couple of days to make sure it's all prepared properly and all of that, but he did have a difficult break. He's going to be OK but it's a significant surgery."

On Cliff Avril:

"He had concussion issues, got hit in the head.''

On Earl Thomas:

"I don't know that yet [if he'll need surgery]. Sometimes with the labrums you don't, so I don't know that."