49ers: 3 times San Francisco made us proud off the field

3 of 4

Richard Sherman San Francisco 49ers (Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images) /

No. 2: No Child Goes Hungry, 49ers CB Richard Sherman

A player whose loud and energetic play on the field is matched with an equally large personality off the field is 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman. He is known for a lot of trash-talking towards opponents, but he backs it up with being one of the top coverage guys in the league.

Sherman doesn’t allow his impact to only be felt on the football field though. In 2019 through the work done via his foundation Blanket Coverage, he was able to impact a whole lot of people’s lives for the better. The foundation’s main goal was to assist students in lower-income neighborhoods in various ways.

A heart-warming story came out during the 2019 Thanksgiving holiday weekend about Sherman and his community outreach. The story highlights how Sherman was on a crusade to pay off outstanding school lunch debts for students.

In November 2019 he paid off $7,491.27 worth of outstanding lunch debts at Cabrillo Middle School in Santa Clara, California. And in the previous month, it was noted that he paid off nearly $20,000 worth of student lunch debts to public schools in Tacoma, Washington.

Sherman found it a travesty that students were being denied lunches if they had debts and went ahead and handled it. For his philanthropic work through his foundation in 2019, he was nominated for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award.

Although he didn’t end up winning the award, his acts of service in helping the youth and just people in need warmed the hearts of many, especially the 49er Faithful.