Has any nickname ever fit any human better than “Beast Mode” fits Marshawn Lynch?
Sometimes he’ll be running and it’ll seem like he’s cornered, and then he’ll just run right through whatever defenders looked like a problem. He finds cutback lanes that shouldn’t exist, he almost always falls forward for an extra few yards when he goes down, and as the game unfolds and the defense gets tired, he only gets better. Beast Mode.
On any given play, he can go from a regular running back to some kind of hulked-out superhero flying into the end zone. Beast Mode.
It’s not just your imagination if it feels like Marshawn Lynch never gets brought down by just one guy. As Danny Kelly wrote for SB Nation this week, Lynch broke 101 tackles in 2014, the most since Pro Football Focus started tracking that stat eight years ago. In the NFC Championship Game against the Packers, he was the most dominant player on either team. He forced a playoff-record 15 missed tackles, and 110 of his 157 yards came after contact. (...)
Now let’s talk about what he’s like off the field. What’s amazing about anyone complaining about Lynch’s media boycott is that nobody in the NFL has given us better quotes than Beast Mode.
“I’m just ’bout that action, boss,” he said at last year’s media day. “I ain’t never seen no talking win me nothing.”
“If I do [talk on the field],” he said in 2012, “only thing I tell them is, ‘You know where I’m at: seven yards deep. I ain’t too hard to find.’”
Last year, Deion Sanders asked him, “You don’t like podiums, do you?”
Lynch: “Nah, it ain’t my thing.”
Deion: “What is your thing?”
Lynch: “Lay back, kick back, mind my business, stay in my own lane.”
What does his dog do during Seahawks games? Does he watch him play?
Lynch: “No. He’s out doing his doggie dog thing, living in his doggie dog world. You feel me?”
Yesterday, he showed up to face thousands of reporters and said, “I’m here so I won’t get fined,” 29 times in a row. Anyone who can read that sentence without smiling is taking all this far too seriously.
The only real downside of Lynch’s silence turning into media day’s biggest story is that it obscures his actual story. It’s one of the more incredible tales we probably won’t hear this week.
Sometimes he’ll be running and it’ll seem like he’s cornered, and then he’ll just run right through whatever defenders looked like a problem. He finds cutback lanes that shouldn’t exist, he almost always falls forward for an extra few yards when he goes down, and as the game unfolds and the defense gets tired, he only gets better. Beast Mode.
On any given play, he can go from a regular running back to some kind of hulked-out superhero flying into the end zone. Beast Mode.It’s not just your imagination if it feels like Marshawn Lynch never gets brought down by just one guy. As Danny Kelly wrote for SB Nation this week, Lynch broke 101 tackles in 2014, the most since Pro Football Focus started tracking that stat eight years ago. In the NFC Championship Game against the Packers, he was the most dominant player on either team. He forced a playoff-record 15 missed tackles, and 110 of his 157 yards came after contact. (...)
Now let’s talk about what he’s like off the field. What’s amazing about anyone complaining about Lynch’s media boycott is that nobody in the NFL has given us better quotes than Beast Mode.
“I’m just ’bout that action, boss,” he said at last year’s media day. “I ain’t never seen no talking win me nothing.”
“If I do [talk on the field],” he said in 2012, “only thing I tell them is, ‘You know where I’m at: seven yards deep. I ain’t too hard to find.’”
Last year, Deion Sanders asked him, “You don’t like podiums, do you?”
Lynch: “Nah, it ain’t my thing.”
Deion: “What is your thing?”
Lynch: “Lay back, kick back, mind my business, stay in my own lane.”
What does his dog do during Seahawks games? Does he watch him play?
Lynch: “No. He’s out doing his doggie dog thing, living in his doggie dog world. You feel me?”
Yesterday, he showed up to face thousands of reporters and said, “I’m here so I won’t get fined,” 29 times in a row. Anyone who can read that sentence without smiling is taking all this far too seriously.
The only real downside of Lynch’s silence turning into media day’s biggest story is that it obscures his actual story. It’s one of the more incredible tales we probably won’t hear this week.
by Andrew Sharp, Grantland | Read more:
Image: Jonathan Ferrey/Getty
