Beast Mode is back. But can Marshawn Lynch's shock comeback save Seattle?
Beast Mode is back. The coolest athlete in the NFL has returned to Seattle. And he did so in the most Marshawn Lynchy way possible: A press conference that lasted all of 12 seconds.
Unifying the player I least want to tackleand player I most want to have a drink withchampionship belts is hard. Here’s the entire list of players who’ve held both honors in the modern era: Rob Gronkowski; Marshawn Lynch. That’s it.
The league is better with Lynch in it. He makes football fun, which is the entire point of this enterprise (unless you own one of the teams). He is the author of such classics as: I’m just here so I won’t get fined; the pre-game Hanibal Lecter mask; the mid-game candy scoffing; the post-game injury cart joyriding; and the greatest run in playoff history. He became the physical embodiment of all that was great about those Seahawks teams from 2011-14, which averaged 12 wins a season and reached two Super Bowls. They were all swagger and venom and brute force and they were loudly sand proudly themselves, whether than conformed to the understood norms or not.
Lynch is a true one-of-one, an endangered species in the age of media training and carefully crafted public images. Most professional athletes treat their media obligations as a compulsory nuisance. Lynch turned his disdain into a sport all of its own. Returning
with a press conference that lasted longer than it takes to munch on a handful of Skittles feels appropriate.
The move has a slight whiff of desperation about it. Lynch, who turns 34 in April, looked close to cooked during his final days in Oakland. But the Seahawks were desperate for running back help in the wake of season-ending injuries to Chris Carson and CJ Prosise. And they wanted people who knew their system – not just the scheme, but the culture – so they rolled back the years and added Lynch, along with his old running mate Robert Turbin.
This is the second time Lynch has come out of retirement, initially bowing out from Seattle after the 2015 season and later returning to play for his hometown Oakland Raiders in 2017, before retiring again after 2018.
Something just feels right about
Lynch being back in Seattle. He was built by Oakland, was loyal to its people, but he found a home and a run of professional success with the Seahawks that has never been matched at his other stops.
There was nothing like Lynch running alongside that Seattle roar. His best runs felt like cultural earthquakes. They always seemed to come along in the most important moments.
Adrian Peterson is the only kind of, sort of comparison. Both were overwhelming physical forces. Both were feared by defenders and defensive coordinators: there’s no schematic invention you can design to stop a running back sprinting through your linebacker’s face mask. Peterson, on the whole, was the better player of the two. He ran with the same combination of pace and power and grace. But there was less barbarism to Peterson’s best runs. He saw a hole few could, hit it with force, and cranked to a gear that nobody on the field could compete with. It was like someone had perfected the art, and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it – not even the injury gods.
Lynch runs were (are?) chaos. He has always had a knack for changing speed and direction with an abruptness that confuses defenders. Someone so big, so thick, shouldn’t be able to shift allthat weight thatquick, they’d think. Lynch would burst over here, then cutback there, then launch someone into the air and chuck someone to the ground – sometimes in the same movement – before barreling between a fresh pair of defenders. It was like an overly enthusiastic gym teacher playing pickup against a bunch of fifthgraders. He played a car-crash style with a child-like glee.
That is borderline bullying.
Lynch is undeniably a lesser player than he was at the apex of his powers. He has missed 19 games combined in the last three seasons he’s played in the league. But there’s a chance, even it’s a slim one, that he adds the missing spark to the Seahawks offense. Right now, they’re completely reliant on Russell Wilson to bail them out. Nobody has done more with less this year – again:
The Seahawks are only the second team in history to win 10 one-score (games decided by eight points or fewer). Football coaches like to put that down to heart and grit and preparedness and other such intangibles, despite all the historical data indicating winning close is not a skill: it’s a confluence of luck and small sample sizes. The Seahawks are a good team with an inflated record; one with the chance to win the NFC West if they beat the Niners on Sunday night. But they just happen to be a good average team with an MVP-caliber quarterback, giving them a shot at a deep playoff run, if Wilson is able to get some kind of help.
A competent run game, even one that is less than average, just might keep linebackers and members of the secondary on their toes, making life a little easier for Wilson and Seattle’s receivers. Any hint of help and this Seahawks offense will vault from decent to very good in a hurry. Do that, and the team has a chance to go in anywhere and beat anyone in the playoffs, whether the defense holds up its end of the bargain or not.