Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll has cooled talk of a reunion with former All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman.

Following three seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, the 33-year-old Sherman is a free agent.

In an interview with ESPN on Friday, Sherman said he had been in communication with the New Orleans Saints and Las Vegas Raiders, along with the Seahawks.

"I've talked to Sherm quite a few times here over the offseason," Carroll confirmed, as per ESPN.

"So we have stayed in contact and he's out there. I know he's thinking about it.

"He's looking for an opportunity. I saw where he said there's three or four teams he's considering or whatever.

"So we'll see what happens. But he's been a great player and he's still got some ball left in him, I'm sure.

"But at this point we're going to clear through this day, figure out what happens with the rooks coming up and we'll see where it sits later on."

The Seahawks signed Oklahoma cornerback Tre Brown with one of their three draft picks and Carroll insists a move to bring back Sherman, who starred for Seattle between 2011 and 2017, is not immediately in the works.

"That's not one of our thoughts right now that we're going out and getting another guy at that spot, but we're going to keep looking," Carroll said.

"We're not going to stop looking and we're going to compete. So in that sense, I leave everything open and that's just one of them."

Sherman was a key member of the Seahawks team that claimed Super Bowl glory in 2014 and came up agonisingly short of a repeat against the New England Patriots in the following year's showpiece.

He was named a First Team All-Pro three times in Seattle and made four Pro Bowls.

Injuries have taken an increased toll, however. The Seahawks released Sherman in the 2017 offseason after he suffered a torn Achilles and, after a fifth career Pro Bowl in 2019 and helping the 49ers to the Super Bowl, he missed 11 games with a calf injury last season.

"I want to get on a competitive team," Sherman told ESPN. "I think I still have a lot to give to the game.

"I think I still have a lot that I want to accomplish and I think I can go out there and help a defense come together like it should and reach their potential, reach the heights that the defenses that I've played on have reached."

Russell Westbrook, Doc Rivers and Billie Jean King reacted with revulsion to the assault on the US Capitol by supporters of outgoing president Donald Trump, united in the view there would have been a deadlier outcome had the rioters been black people.

On a dark day for the United States, thousands of Trump backers descended on Washington for a protest rally, refusing to accept the result of November's election that saw Joe Biden sweep to power.

Two weeks out from Biden's inauguration, many violent protesters breached security and accessed the Capitol, causing carnage and destruction as they appeared to go largely unchallenged.

There were a number of casualties, with four dead including a woman who was shot, while reports said a number of explosive devices were discovered.

Washington Wizards star Westbrook said: "It's very unfortunate to see. If those roles were reversed, if those were African-Americans, black people, it would be totally different."

He said the chaos was "just crazy, almost like a movie", and team-mate Bradley Beal agreed it was hard to stomach the scenes, given his view that police took a far less lenient approach to protesters during last year's Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

"It's very disheartening in a lot of ways - a lack of sense of urgency to respond to what was going on, versus protesters at Black Lives Matter over the summer," Beal said.

"The people who were invading our Capitol, that's unheard of and it's disheartening this is where we're at as a country."

Veteran Philadelphia 76ers coach Rivers called the insurgency "pretty disturbing" but vowed that "democracy will prevail".

"It shows a lot, though," Rivers said. "When you saw the [Black Lives Matter] protests in the summer, you saw the riots or more the police and the national guard and the army. And then you see this and you saw nothing.

"It basically proves the point about a privileged life in a lot of ways. I'll say it because I don’t think a lot of people want to: could you imagine today if those were all black people storming the Capitol and what would have happened?

"So that to me is a picture that’s worth a thousand words for all of us to see and probably something for us to reckon with again."

Tennis great King, a long-time activist for equality in sport and society, added on Twitter: "If the rioters storming the Capitol building today were Black and Brown people, the police response would be much different."

Footballer Megan Rapinoe became embroiled in a war of words with Trump during USA's triumph at the 2019 Women's World Cup.

Looking at footage of how seemingly easily the protesters were able to break into the Capitol, Rapinoe offered her opinion, writing: "This is crazy, how did they even get through the..... ohhhhh it was opened for them."

Trump had addressed the crowds earlier in the day, forcefully standing by his view that he was fraudulently robbed of an election win.

In the hours after the Capitol was cleared, Congress confirmed Biden's victory.

Richard Sherman, the San Francisco 49ers cornerback, described the rioters as "terrorists".

He wrote on Twitter: "Never thought Americans would let terrorists into the capital without a fight....sad day. There are certain things my brain could never imagine.... and one of them is black ppl storming a government building and taking things without deadly consequences. But that’s just my brain."

It was not just Sherman's brain thinking along those lines, though. Far from it.

Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard took the same stance, saying: "You just see the privilege, the privilege in America. "It's sad to see, because if any of us was out there, I think we would've been tear-gassed, Maced, probably gunshots, you know?"

And American track and field legend Michael Johnson said the scenes were only to be expected, given the nature of the Trump presidency.

"The alarms were sounded for four years. Republicans ignored them. Many in the media ignored them and normalized dangerous behavior," Johnson wrote on Twitter.

"Sadly, today it all came to be. Shameful! This president and his supporters. Shame on you! And take responsibility!

"People on Twitter (of course) literally equating BLM protesters fighting for justice and equality to White Supremacist Trump supporters (supposed Patriots) gleefully and violently desecrating America's oldest and greatest institutions of democracy. Sadly, this is typical America."