While his teammates and coaches prepared for the second half in the visitor’s locker room at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch stayed on the field at halftime. The team’s most unique player once again doing things his own way.
It was just the latest example of why Lynch might not be a Seahawk in 2015 despite being under contract and despite the fact that he’s still one of the team’s most important players.
But if you’re looking for me to read into Lynch’s halftime decision to have trainers work on his back on the field and not in the locker room as a sign of discontent, or as another example of a fractured relationship between Lynch and the team, or as him sending some sort of message, you came to the wrong place.
I’m buying the explanation head coach Pete Carroll gave for Lynch’s halftime locker room no-show, which was that the veteran running back was “banged up” and needed the treatment he got on the field in order to make it through the second half. And for a running back who turns 29 in April and is due $7 million next season in base salary and bonuses, that’s far more ominous than any reported feuds or unhappiness.
“It’s classic wear and tear on a guy that plays the game the way he plays it,” Carroll said in his Monday press conference. “We had to give him an extra day last week before we practiced him and we will see how it goes this week. I think it’s pretty typical, and he’s been one to really be able to endure it over the past few years.”
Phrases like “wear and tear” and “able to endure it” are pretty big red flags for an aging running back, especially one with Lynch’s career workload and physical style. Lynch has been remarkably productive and durable in his time in Seattle, missing just one game since arriving during the 2010 season. But despite the numbers he is putting up this season, he is also reminding his team that the end will inevitably come. And usually with running backs, the decline isn’t gradual.
Lynch has routinely been given Wednesdays off from practice in recent years to rest his body, but now those Wednesdays are sometimes turning into Wednesdays and Thursdays off. What used to be “back” or “not injury related” on the injury report is now a combination of injuries — calf and rib last week — and shots of Lynch wincing in pain while being poked and prodded by trainers have become an increasingly regular part of the television broadcast.
“No, he was just trying to survive the day,” Carroll said when asked about an NFL.com column that suggested that Lynch “seemed to make a statement about the disconnect between him and his bosses,” by staying on the field at halftime. “He was trying to get through it so he could play for his team and it worked out. He had a good first half and he came back and ripped it in the second half as well, so it was a good plan.”
Lynch isn’t just surviving, he’s thriving at an age when many of his peers begin slowing down. The 28-year-old is running as well, if not better than he ever has since coming to Seattle in a 2010 trade with Buffalo that will go down as one of the best trades in Seattle sports history. However, time will catch up to Lynch at some point, just like it does every athlete, and especially every running back with a career workload like Lynch’s. One of the league’s most physical runners, Lynch averaged 300 carries per year from 2011 to 2013, not including five extra playoff games during that stretch, and he is on pace to get close to that number again this season.
If Lynch can be the player he is right now through the 2015 season, then he’s absolutely worth every remaining penny on the four-year extension he signed after the 2011 season, even if Carroll and general manager John Schneider do think he’s a pain in the butt, and even if they need to free up money to pay Russell Wilson. The version of Lynch we’ve seen through nine games this season is just too important to Seattle’s offense for him to be a cap casualty.
But — and this is the $7 million question — will the 2015 version of Lynch, or even the Week 17 of this season version of Lynch, be the same player as the guy we saw gain 264 yards in his past two games? That’s the question the Seahawks can’t definitively answer, yet have to make a very important decision on this offseason.
“He had a little episode there; he tightened up,” Carroll said of Lynch’s halftime sideline session with trainers. “He’s had back issues well before we ever got him, and he’s always been able to manage it. It’s really ever kept him out of one game in our history, but it’s an ongoing process for him and he knows it better than any of us and he knows how to deal with it. He’s been able to get through it, so he got worked and stretched the whole time trying to get ready. He came out and played like crazy again in the second half. He had a fantastic football game, he was lights out.”
No one, not Carroll, not Schneider and not even Lynch know how much longer Lynch will be “able to get through it” and function at the incredibly high level at which he’s currently performing. And that, not any potential bad blood between Lynch and the Seahawks, is why Lynch spending a freezing cold half on the sideline in Kansas City is potentially telling about his future in Seattle.
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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