The headline from the 60 Minutes Sports profile of retired running back Marshawn Lynch is that he’s indeed done with football. But he said plenty of other interesting things. Something he didn’t say was particularly interesting.
Via Sheil Kapadia of ESPN.com, Lynch refused to discuss Seattle’s final offensive play from Super Bowl XLIX. In that moment, the Seahawks opted while on the doorstep of the New England end zone to throw a pass instead of calling on Lynch to ram his way into the end zone. It didn’t end well.
A separate story Lynch told about his uncle, who played in the NFL, makes it clear that Marshawn indeed had every intention of taking the ball across the plane, if he had been given the chance.
“We went to [Lorenzo Lynch’s] house one time, and he told me something like this,” Lynch said. “He says, ‘It’s fourth-and-one, the running back’s coming through the hole, I’m gonna kiss that [expletive] in the mouth.’ That’s what he told me. ‘Smell his breath.’ This was a young age too. I think that’s when it just clicked in my mind that if you just run through somebody’s face, a lot of people ain’t gonna be able to take that.”
Last year, Lynch suggested during a TV interview in Turkey that the Seahawks opted to pass instead of run because a lot of people wouldn’t have been able to take Lynch as the Super Bowl MVP and, in turn, the “face of the nation.”
Moving forward, folks won’t be seeing much of Lynch’s face on a national platform. Unless he decides that he misses smelling the breath of defensive players.