The scene still is etched in Super Bowl history. There’s Tom Brady celebrating. Russell Wilson looks astonished, Pete Carroll is befuddled. And then Marshawn Lynch cackles in his coach’s face before he trudges back to the locker room.
This was the ending of Super Bowl XLIX. Brady led the surging Patriots to a comeback victory. And the New England defense sealed it by forcing a turnover in the final moments. Facing a 2nd-and-goal from the 1, Carroll had Wilson throw a slant rather than hand off to Lynch, aka Beast Mode, the biggest, baddest running back in the NFL. It was a mind trick. Everyone would be expecting a Lynch handoff. It was such an obvious call. Yet Patriot DB Malcolm Butler stepped in front of Ricardo Lockette for the interception.
Cue the celebration. In sudden defeat, Marshawn Lynch had one more thing he wanted to do. Confront Carroll. Nearly nine years after the fact, the details still are so vivid. Lynch talked about it all with Shannon Sharpe on this week’s "Club Shay Shay" podcast.
Marshawn Lynch says play call freaked him out and he lined up on wrong side of formation
Marshawn Lynch remembers that he was so stunned by the play call that he lined up on the wrong side of the formation. He said his teammates looked at him, wondering what was going on.
Lynch said as he got to the sideline after the interception, he passed by Wilson, who told everybody “I’ll get ’em next time.”
“As I hear this s---, I usually don’t take my helmet off,” Lynch told Sharpe. “But I took my helmet off. And I go right to Pete Carroll’s face. And I hit his a-- with the biggest (extended maniacal laugh).”
Lynch added, “at that point, I go to the locker room, I’m out.” He said he passed by rock star Lenny Kravitz, who seemed stunned to see him there and not on the field. He called his family. And then he went into the locker room. “I go shower, get dressed and as I’m coming out, now I see everybody else coming in. I told them ‘I’ll holler at y’all later.”
He said to this day, he’s not sure who exactly called for a pass and not a handoff to him. He said he used to dream as a little kid of scoring the winning touchdown in a Super Bowl. That was dashed.
“You took a dream away,” Marshawn Lynch said. “You took a moment away … you took a dynasty away.”
If you don’t remember the play, here’s the video clip of it.
Lynch came within inches of TD on play before
And now, let’s talk about the play before. With two minutes to go in the game, the Patriots and Brady had just gone ahead for the first time since the second quarter. Wilson quickly took Seattle downfield. And finally, Marshawn Lynch got a carry on first-and-goal from the 5. He gained four yards, surpassing 100 yards for the game on the carry.
It is nice to see Marshawn Lynch so open about what happened nearly nine years ago. In the days before the Super Bowl in 2015, he refused to answer questions asked by reporters. During NFL mandated press availabilities, Lynch would answer a question with “I’m just here so I won’t get fined” every time a reporter asked him something.
But that ending. It’s all but guaranteed that last laugh probably still haunts Pete Carroll.
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