The NFL really hasn’t been the same since Marshawn Lynch retired. Sure, he was prickly and rarely said anything to the media, but to me that was part of his charm. He was different. He didn’t care what people WANTED him to do, he did what he felt was best for him. Also, he was a true joy to watch on the football field. They didn’t call him “Beast Mode” for nothing after all.
Now, however, we also know, thanks to his retirement, that Lynch is actually a pretty damn good guy with a really good sense of humor.
So it’s really no surprise that those who spent an inordinate amount of time with him, his Seattle Seahawks teammates, have some pretty amazing and hilarious stories to tell about Lynch.
Here are few that were gathered up by the Seattle Times recently…
Ricardo Lockette, the Seattle wide receiver who almost died on the field, gets us started…
Lockette’s story started in a hospital room in Dallas on the day his football career ended. He couldn’t move his neck. Offensive lineman Russell Okung was on his right, Lynch on his left. Lynch made Lockette laugh so hard that Lockette eventually told him: “Bro, you’re going to kill me! I haven’t had surgery yet.”
“He just told me, ‘Don’t be in here crying,’” Lockette said. “’Don’t be doing all that crying because Beast Mode don’t cry, and if you cry, I’m going to cry.’ I can visually picture that. I enjoyed that.”
Here’s one from linebacker Bobby Wagner…
“As a rookie, you kind of go too hard at practice. He came to the defensive huddle and told me I was going too hard and really was getting in my face. And then after practice, he came up to me and was like: ‘Don’t stop doing what you’re doing. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you could be really good in this league.’ It was a test to see if I was going to back down. Ever since that point, he’s always been on me: ‘Don’t be like the other linebackers.’ He played against Ray Lewis and all those guys, and he was trying to say the linebackers now are going away from that. He was always putting it in my head, ‘Don’t be like everyone else.’”
Punter Jon Ryan also has a good one…
“It was after a game where Marshawn had like 30 carries, a ton of touches, and he got beat up. I was in a restaurant with my mother, and him and his uncle and a friend came and sat down. It was a totally quiet restaurant. No one else was in there. My mom was like, ‘Can you introduce me to Marshawn?’ I was like: ‘It’s no problem. He’s beat up, he doesn’t want to talk right now, but he obviously will want to meet you really quickly.’ So I went over and said: ‘Marshawn, this is my mom. She just wanted to meet you.’ And I kind of wanted to leave him alone. But Marshawn sat there and talked to her for a half hour. After that, probably once a month for the next three years, Marshawn asked how my mom was doing.”
So does wide receiver Doug Baldwin…
“My first week here, we were outside on the field, and I was talking to Justin Forsett. I kind of knew Justin a little bit, so we were talking about Stanford. He brings Marshawn over and goes, ‘He’s a Stanford kid.’ And Marshawn goes, ‘Maaaaan, (expletive) Stanford.’ And that was my introduction to Marshawn. He wasn’t trying to be negative or anything. He was trying to set the tone. He even said to me: ‘I don’t care where you went. Show me what you got on this field.’ It wasn’t like him trying to big time a rookie. He was saying, ‘Don’t take this for granted.’ That’s what I took away from it, and I just remember every day I came out there, I would look at Marshawn and see him getting into his mode, playing his loud music. It inspired me to go out there and do the same thing.”
Defensive end Cliff Avril, center Justin Britt, offensive tackle Garry Gilliam and even Thomas Rawls’ mom all also shared fantastic stories about the man they call “Beast Mode.”
So like I said, the NFL just hasn’t been quite the same since Marshawn Lynch retired and these stories are a big part of the reason why.
Be sure to check all of the tremendous tales here.
H/T Uproxx