One month to the day since the Seahawks opted not to give the football to running back Marshawn Lynch on the doorstep of the New England end zone in Super Bowl XLIX, a video has surfaced showing Lynch explaining his position on the most scrutinized play call in league history. Under a frustratingly loud translation of his comments into Turkish.
The video mentioned earlier by MDS includes Lynch’s reaction to the decision to throw the ball and to not let him run it with the NFL title on the line.
“To be honest with you, I would be a liar if I didn’t tell you that I was expecting the ball,” Lynch said. “I think it was more of a -- how do I say this? When you look at me, and you let me run that ball in, I’m the face of the nation. You know, the MVP of the Super Bowl, that’s pretty much the face of the nation at that point in time. I don’t know what went into that call. Maybe it was a good thing that I didn’t get the ball. I mean, you know, it cost us the Super Bowl.”
Not too far between the lines of Lynch’s response lurks the notion that he buys in to the popular conspiracy theory (misguided as it may be) that the team wanted quarterback Russell Wilson and not Lynch to be the Super Bowl MVP and, in turn, the “face of the nation.”
But here’s the thing about conspiracy theories. It doesn’t matter if they’re true; if only matters if people believe them to be true. If Lynch and other Seahawks players believe that the team chose to throw and not to run in order to prevent Lynch from becoming the MVP of the Super Bowl and in turn the “face of the nation,” coach Pete Carroll will have plenty of additional work to do to get the players to turn the page on the 2014 season and to try to climb back out of the valley of 0-0 in 2015 for a shot at a third straight Super Bowl appearance.