JERSEY CITY, N.J. — The team-interview sessions are done, Seahawks RB Marshawn Lynch is relieved of hard duty, and the Super Bowl world will have to seek drama elsewhere.
Lynch, along with his hoss-whisperer friend and teammate, Michael Robinson, had an uneventful final session Thursday with the media after Lynch agreed to a 15-minute limit than ended in less than eight. He was characteristically subdued, but answered every question. When he was told time was up, he hopped out of the chair and was on his way.
As is often the case, Lynch’s understated, dry wit flashed when he was asked about Seahawks assistant head coach Tom Cable, a former head coach of the Oakland Raiders who in 2009 had an altercation with assistant Randy Hanson, who ended up with a broken jaw.
“Being from Oakland, all I knew about him is he punched people,” Lynch said. “That’s my kind of person.”
The event was more orderly than the Wednesday session, when Lynch admitted he was there just to avoid being fined, and abruptly left the table by walking on empty chairs.
Throughout, Lynch has been polite and non-confrontational, merely mystified by the need to talk. Lynch’s longest answers always were about teammates, his shortest to questions about himself.
“I’m just about action,” he said Tuesday at media day. “You say ‘hut,’ and there’s action. All the unnecessary talk, it don’t do nothing for me.”
Action is only three days away. Can we have an amen?
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Mongol General: Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Seeing all this with Marshawn at the Super Bowl has got me wondering if he’ll be like Barry Sanders or Napolean Kaufman and leave the NFL early.
Any man who has an earthquake named after him doesn’t have to say much of anything anymore. All he has to do is rumble.
Glad that’s over. Seriously, Art, some of your brethren are self important jerks. I know some of you are just doing your job to the best of your ability, and I know you’ll say Marshawn brought this on himself, but I doubt you’d find half a dozen fans across the country that would have cared if the media hadn’t made such a big deal of it.
Lets look at the Richard Sherman story.
He has his rant and he’s labeled a “classless thug.” Okay, it’s a big story and the media run with it for a week.
Then he gets to New Jersey, doesn’t say anything inflammatory, and is labeled a “conformist bore.”
At media day he’s charming, polite, and articulate, and that night the story becomes his rant was all an act to put the spotlight on himself. He’s a “self-centered jerk.” (BTW Joe Buck pulled that accusation out of… well, thin air, based on his impression of it a week and half later. So who’s trying to put the spotlight on himself?)
In reading comment threads on many of the national articles, people still hate Sherman (no surprise, they hated him before), but the pro Marshawn side is polling about 8 to 2, despite the negative media spin.
So what’s the media’s role here? Are they reporting the news, or creating it?
Amen!