Few players, if any, have been closer with Marshawn Lynch during his tenure than fullback Michael Robinson, who played for Seattle for four seasons with Lynch before retiring last year. When Lynch stopped talking to the media in recent years, Robinson, who sat in the locker next to Lynch, would serve as his unofficial spokesman; when Robinson and his wife had a date night, one of the league’s most dominant running backs served as a baby sitter.
Yet even Robinson, one of Lynch’s closest friends who now works as an analyst for the NFL Network, is unsure what the future holds for Seattle’s Pro Bowl running back. Seahawks general manager John Schneider said earlier in the week that Seattle wants Lynch back, but first Lynch has to decide if he wants to play in 2015, and Robinson, like his former bosses, doesn’t know which way Lynch is leaning right now.
“I don’t know,” Robinson told 710 ESPN Seattle on Thursday. “I don’t think Marshawn knows yet. It’s very difficult to ask a running back, of all positions…. Has he had enough football? You can’t ask him that right after the season, because your body is telling you yes.
“The guy loves his teammates, he loves the city of Seattle, he loves the 12s and what they bring to the game and how they kind of embody his style of football, that’s what I do know. But when you talk about whether he’s going to retire? I don’t think even he knows the answer to that question.”
Robinson said he had been on the phone with Lynch just 10 minutes before the radio interview, but that the conversation was more about work Lynch was doing on his Family First foundation, and not his future as a player.
Robinson said he believes the decision is mostly a physical one at this point for Lynch given the wear and tear on his body, but also said, “I think Marshawn is getting to a point in his life where maybe he wants to enjoy other things in life, maybe other things are becoming more important to him.”
That being said, when pushed about Lynch’s decision and asked which way he would bet, Robinson said, “If I was a betting man—and I’m not—if I was a betting man, my bet would be that he plays next year in Seattle.”
Asked if he had a thought on when that decision might come, Robinson laughed and said, “No. Come on, man, it’s Marshawn… I don’t know what the timeline is, guys, I really don’t. I would guess Marshawn probably doesn’t know the timeline. It’s probably going to be a feel thing. We’ll see, we’ll just sit and wait like everybody else.”
Of course any conversation about Lynch’s future is going to involve money as well as the running back’s desire to play. Lynch is due $7 million in 2015, the last year on his current deal, but the Seahawks have already talked with him about an extension that would give him a raise in 2015.
“I don’t think it factors in too much, but obviously this is a business,” Robinson said. “With the running back position being so devalued, I think he’s at a point where he wants to be paid kind of like the heartbeat of a team, as he should be. As a running back, I think he knows that 30 is kind of that magic number, and he’s turning 29. Right now he knows that he has the leverage, he knows he’s the best back in the league, he knows he’s a difference maker, not only on the field but off the field. In your city, in your community, he is a difference maker on and off the filed. So right now he has the leverage. I don’t think money is a factor with him, I just think he wants to be paid like the heartbeat, like the face of the offense and of the team.”
Robinson also gave an interesting answer when asked if the team needed Lynch more than Lynch needed the team: “Yes, and that’s very rare, because in this league, no team needs an individual player, that’s just the way this business goes, and ordinarily speaking, no. But I know the philosophy of Pete Carroll and what he wants to get across in his tough, smart, competitive football environment; how Marshawn’s running style embodies the strain that each player much play with, I do know that. And there isn’t another guy in college, there isn’t another guy in the National Football League who embodies that philosophy more than Marshawn Lynch, so in this particular situation, yes the player, Marshawn Lynch, does have more leverage. They need him more than he needs them.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
