http://www.fieldgulls.com/2016/2/8/...oung-nfl-stars-must-learn-from-marshawn-lynch
1. Save your money.
-According to Ian Rappaport, Lynch has lived mostly off of endorsements and has spent none to very little of the 49 million plus dollars he earned of his NFL salary. He makes about $5 million per year in endorsements as well as some other business ventures.
Also, Seahawks Rookie Receiver Tyler Lockett says Lynch helps him with financial advice, such as advice on his 401(K):
"I know when I talk to Marshawn, Marshawn just helps me with a lot of things as far as just understanding my worth. If you ask me, I think he’s a great guy. Even at practice, he’s helped us with the 401(k), talked to us about that. ...He’s helped us with a lot of stuff."
2. Diversify.
-Marshawn has trade marked catch phrases (like Beast Mode, and I'm just here so I won't get fined), sells clothes (just opened a retail store) and even does local commercials as well as huge national spots.
The University of South Carolina athletic department, supplement company MusclePharm and Deuce Watches all give him a cut of their "Beast Mode" businesses. So too did Aaron Rodgers' brother Luke, whose company Pro Merch made 2,500 "Beast Mode" shirts to sell at a Target in Seattle. They sold out in three days, Hendrickson said. This week, Lynch gave Joe Montana's wife, Jennifer, the rights to sell "Beast Mode" necklaces on her website in exchange for a piece of each $124 sale.
For those companies that use the phrase without his permission, there are cease and desist letters. Even companies that sign Lynch to a business deal don't automatically get rights to "Beast Mode." Limiting the use of "Beast Mode" has made it more valuable, and it has included stopping other athletes from being able to use it. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp started using "Beast Mode" more frequently of late, but when the Dodgers went to Lynch for permission to use the phrase in association with Kemp, Lynch turned them down despite the promise of a $100,000 royalty. All the money generated by "Beast Mode" goes to Lynch's Fam 1st Family Foundation.
3. Give back.
-Marshawn's Fam 1st Family Foundation's goal is to build self-esteem and academic learning skills in underprivileged youth. He holds camps, gives out food, etc. He even partnered with Starbucks for a Beast Mode Frappuccino for charity. He has even helped juvenile offenders in Oakland.
According to the Huffington Post:
On the Friday before home games, Lynch picks up a kid and his family from an impoverished background in inner city Seattle and brings them to the Seahawks' practice facility where he proceeds to show them around and introduce them to coaches and players. He doesn't allow the Seahawks' media relations staffers to seek TV or print coverage for these occasions.
4. Be yourself.
-Now this might not be possible outside of Seattle/Pete Carrol's team. But Lynch embraces his shy, aloof, funny and quirky personality. He did things on his terms. As a result, it has made him more memorable than say, Shaun Alexander or Ricky Watters.
He had been this way since college. This quote from college teammate, wide receiver Geoff McArthur :
"Marshawn has been the same since day one...When I was in my prime, I used to tell him be careful [in] how you act, be careful who you associate with, be careful in general. The NFL and sponsors don't want to pay someone the looks or acts too 'hood.'
"His explanation was priceless..GMac, when they came to my momma house and told me they love me, love the way I play ball, they didn't say they would love me if I changed.' So, in a nutshell, the people that accepted him as him are wrong for attempting to change him [in theory]."
This is what, according to Sports Illustrated, Carroll told Lynch on his first day in Seattle in front of his teammates:
"Marshawn, people have been trying to change you your whole life," Carroll said, according to the same two players. "They’re trying to make you into something you’re not. Here are the things that are important to us—our three rules—other than that, I have a ton of respect for you and I want you to be you."
5. Intensity. Effort. Physicality.
-Marshawn was never the quickest or shiftiest back. He ran a very good 4.46 40 yard dash at the combine, out of college, but as a tailback that only gets you so far. Even at age 28, Lynch led the NFL with 17 runs where he gained at least 10 yards after the first hit. The "beast mode" run he is famous for overshadow the regular, everyday runs where he turned No Gain runs into 4-6 yard pickups on effort alone. Never the best short yardage runner, he would will himself to 4-5 yard touchdown runs with defenders on his back. At the end of the day, intensity and physicality win in every position other than quarterback and the kickers.
6. Humility.
-After every touchdown, Marshawn would not dance. Sure, he'd do the odd crotch grab. But not in a way to call out the other team. It was part of his dive into the end zone. This was the typical lynch celebration:
-At Super Bowl 48, he said this:
"I'm not as comfortable, especially at the position I play, making it about me. As a running back, it takes five offensive linemen, a tight end, a fullback and possibly two wide receivers, in order to make my job successful. But when I do interviews, most of the time it'll come back to me. There are only so many times I can say, 'I owe it to my offensive linemen,' or, 'The credit should go to my teammates,' before it becomes run down."
"This goes back even to Pop Warner. You'd have a good game and they'd want you to give a couple of quotes for the newspaper, and I would let my other teammates be the ones to talk. That's how it was in high school, too. At Cal, I'd have my cousin, Robert Jordan, and Justin Forsett do it.
"Football's just always been hella fun to me, not expressing myself in the media. I don't do it to get attention; I just do it 'cause I love that (expletive)."
"He didn't take his helmet off on the sidelines in college because he didn't want the recognition.... "I would have to leave in the third quarter of games to pull the car around to the front of the locker room just so he and Rob (Lynch's cousin Robert Jordan) can jump out - no shower, no nothing - to leave before anyone can get to the locker room," -Rashaad Nunnally, a Cal track star who lived with Lynch in Berkeley.
7. Learn from your Mistakes.
-Lynch has had his share of set backs. In Buffalo he had a hit-and-run incident and a guilty plea to a misdemeanor gun charge. Then in 2012 in Seattle there was his DUI. But he didn't double down on these. He admitted he was wrong. After the DUI, he even showed up at his camp right after, and admitted to the kids what he did wrong and used it as a teachable moment for these youth.
According to an SI article, Bills' ex-coach Dick Jauron commended him for owning up to what he did:
"Lynch pleaded guilty to a hit-and-run charge after striking a pedestrian in 2008 in Buffalo, and in 2009 he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor weapons charge stemming from an offseason arrest in California. There were other, unpublicized run-ins that people close to Lynch characterize as profiling. His condo association busted him for having a dog, even though other tenants had dogs. And he was pulled over and cited for playing music too loudly—not on the street, but in the Bills’ stadium parking lot.
"When the legal stuff came up," Jauron says, "I needed to know how it happened, what he felt, what he was thinking. He never tried to pull the wool over my eyes. He would willingly admit errors and move on with his life."
Jauron, who still adores Lynch personally and professionally, was fired by the Bills in November 2009, and the new regime made a business decision to trade Lynch to Seattle."
8. Generosity to those around you.
-Lynch has been known to give his shoes to kids in Oakland who compliment them.
-At Cal, Lynch would take himself out of games so teammate Justin Forsett could get snaps (according to Forsett himself in an SI article).
-Also at Cal, if Lynch had a nice T-shirt that a teammate liked, he would simply take it off and give it away:
During his college years at Cal, if a teammate, friend or acquaintance complimented Lynch on the shirt he was wearing, he would hand it over. "He’s walking around on the street with his shirt off," says Ravens running back Justin Forsett, a former teammate of Lynch's at Cal and in Seattle. "Just because somebody said, ‘That’s a nice shirt.’
When Lynch was a sophomore, he struck up a conversation with Nick Sundberg, a freshman, one day as they stretched near each other. "I was intimidated by everybody because I was 17, I had no idea what to expect about college," says Sundberg, who has played for Washington since 2010. "I just stayed quiet, but he asked me where I was from, got to know me. He would do that with other freshman. He did that with me, and I was just a long snapper.
"We were at a banquet during his junior year, and my mom ran into him in the hallway on her way to the bathroom. And she came back 20 minutes later and she was like, ‘I met Marshawn and he was the nicest boy!’
"To this day her favorite NFL player is me. And her second favorite is Marshawn Lynch."
By his junior season, Lynch had rushed for nearly 2,000 yards, with 18 touchdowns, and was a Heisman candidate. The school launched a website promoting his bid: Marshawn10.com. But Lynch wasn’t interested. A national magazine went to Cal to profile him, but Lynch begged off the interview and put his cousin, wide receiver Robert Jordan, in front of the reporter instead. During games he would feign exhaustion and take himself out so Forsett, his backup, could get snaps.
"He did that almost every game at Cal, and even when we both played in Seattle," Forsett says. "I’m sure the coaches weren’t too pleased. But it wasn’t that blatant. They would think, OK, he needs a rest, but he never did.
"If it wasn’t for him taking himself out of games and allowing me to go in and play, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity."
-This from The MMQB
During Super Bowl week last February, the peak of Lynch’s dissonance with local and national media, he called Shone Gipson, a Bills assistant athletic trainer, to offer condolences on the death of his father. "For him to do that, with everything he had going on," Gipson says, "it meant a lot to me, and it showed a lot about who he is."
Before Jauron’s daughter, Amy, married Falcons media relations assistant Brian Cearns in 2012, Lynch called his buddies who played for Atlanta, including former Pro Bowl safety Lawyer Milloy, to make sure Cearns was an upstanding guy. Apparently satisfied, he never told Jauron that he'd vetted the coach’s future son-in-law.
"That’s priceless," Jauron said upon being told the news more than two years later. "That’s Marshawn."
-In 2007, just 3 months into his rookie season, Lynch paid for the funeral of his friend Robert Benjamin, 25, who was shot dead on a sidewalk of his old street while walking back from a park after playing basketball with friends.
9. Take the High Road.
Lynch is popular among NFL Players and has avoided feuds and on-field confrontations despite is physicality. When asked about the Richard Sherman/Michael Crabtree Feud he said "I play offense...I don’t know nothing about that." After the Patriots beat the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX, Patriots running back LeGarrette Blount who ran 14 times for a grand total of…40 whole yards rushing in that game held up a T-Shirt at the Pats’ parade that said B*TCH MODE in obvious reference to Lynch. Lynch didn't comment. Didn't say a word. Didn't tweet about it. Instead, Blount had to issue a public apology without Lynch lifting a finger. In a game against the Texans, a mic picked up some light hearted trash talk from Brian Cushing and Lynch having a complimentary exchange with him: When you take the high road, any criticism or trash talk towards you makes the other guy look silly.
10. Before all Else, be a good teammate first.
-Some quotes on Lynch...
Steven Hauschka missed three field goals for the first time in his life the last time the Seahawks were here, in a 19-3 win at Arizona on Dec. 21. After the third miss, Lynch came up to Hauschka, took his blue-and-green team beanie off his head and playfully shoved it on his kicker’s head, messing with Hauschka’s hair.
Then the running back patted his kicker on the back for encouragement. Both guys smiled.
"He was just trying to cheer me up. It means a lot to have my teammates on my side like that," Hauschka said.
"He’s one of the best teammates that anybody can ask for. One of my favorite players I’ve ever played with." -Ex-Seahawks Center Max Unger.
"He's a great dude, I love having him around my kids..." -Seahawks' Running Back Fred Jackson.
"He will babysit whenever I need him. It scared me at first. But..my kids love him." - Ex-Seahawks fullback Michael Robinson.
1. Save your money.
-According to Ian Rappaport, Lynch has lived mostly off of endorsements and has spent none to very little of the 49 million plus dollars he earned of his NFL salary. He makes about $5 million per year in endorsements as well as some other business ventures.
Also, Seahawks Rookie Receiver Tyler Lockett says Lynch helps him with financial advice, such as advice on his 401(K):
"I know when I talk to Marshawn, Marshawn just helps me with a lot of things as far as just understanding my worth. If you ask me, I think he’s a great guy. Even at practice, he’s helped us with the 401(k), talked to us about that. ...He’s helped us with a lot of stuff."
2. Diversify.
-Marshawn has trade marked catch phrases (like Beast Mode, and I'm just here so I won't get fined), sells clothes (just opened a retail store) and even does local commercials as well as huge national spots.
The University of South Carolina athletic department, supplement company MusclePharm and Deuce Watches all give him a cut of their "Beast Mode" businesses. So too did Aaron Rodgers' brother Luke, whose company Pro Merch made 2,500 "Beast Mode" shirts to sell at a Target in Seattle. They sold out in three days, Hendrickson said. This week, Lynch gave Joe Montana's wife, Jennifer, the rights to sell "Beast Mode" necklaces on her website in exchange for a piece of each $124 sale.
For those companies that use the phrase without his permission, there are cease and desist letters. Even companies that sign Lynch to a business deal don't automatically get rights to "Beast Mode." Limiting the use of "Beast Mode" has made it more valuable, and it has included stopping other athletes from being able to use it. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp started using "Beast Mode" more frequently of late, but when the Dodgers went to Lynch for permission to use the phrase in association with Kemp, Lynch turned them down despite the promise of a $100,000 royalty. All the money generated by "Beast Mode" goes to Lynch's Fam 1st Family Foundation.
3. Give back.
-Marshawn's Fam 1st Family Foundation's goal is to build self-esteem and academic learning skills in underprivileged youth. He holds camps, gives out food, etc. He even partnered with Starbucks for a Beast Mode Frappuccino for charity. He has even helped juvenile offenders in Oakland.
According to the Huffington Post:
On the Friday before home games, Lynch picks up a kid and his family from an impoverished background in inner city Seattle and brings them to the Seahawks' practice facility where he proceeds to show them around and introduce them to coaches and players. He doesn't allow the Seahawks' media relations staffers to seek TV or print coverage for these occasions.
4. Be yourself.
-Now this might not be possible outside of Seattle/Pete Carrol's team. But Lynch embraces his shy, aloof, funny and quirky personality. He did things on his terms. As a result, it has made him more memorable than say, Shaun Alexander or Ricky Watters.
He had been this way since college. This quote from college teammate, wide receiver Geoff McArthur :
"Marshawn has been the same since day one...When I was in my prime, I used to tell him be careful [in] how you act, be careful who you associate with, be careful in general. The NFL and sponsors don't want to pay someone the looks or acts too 'hood.'
"His explanation was priceless..GMac, when they came to my momma house and told me they love me, love the way I play ball, they didn't say they would love me if I changed.' So, in a nutshell, the people that accepted him as him are wrong for attempting to change him [in theory]."
This is what, according to Sports Illustrated, Carroll told Lynch on his first day in Seattle in front of his teammates:
"Marshawn, people have been trying to change you your whole life," Carroll said, according to the same two players. "They’re trying to make you into something you’re not. Here are the things that are important to us—our three rules—other than that, I have a ton of respect for you and I want you to be you."
5. Intensity. Effort. Physicality.
-Marshawn was never the quickest or shiftiest back. He ran a very good 4.46 40 yard dash at the combine, out of college, but as a tailback that only gets you so far. Even at age 28, Lynch led the NFL with 17 runs where he gained at least 10 yards after the first hit. The "beast mode" run he is famous for overshadow the regular, everyday runs where he turned No Gain runs into 4-6 yard pickups on effort alone. Never the best short yardage runner, he would will himself to 4-5 yard touchdown runs with defenders on his back. At the end of the day, intensity and physicality win in every position other than quarterback and the kickers.
6. Humility.
-After every touchdown, Marshawn would not dance. Sure, he'd do the odd crotch grab. But not in a way to call out the other team. It was part of his dive into the end zone. This was the typical lynch celebration:
-At Super Bowl 48, he said this:
"I'm not as comfortable, especially at the position I play, making it about me. As a running back, it takes five offensive linemen, a tight end, a fullback and possibly two wide receivers, in order to make my job successful. But when I do interviews, most of the time it'll come back to me. There are only so many times I can say, 'I owe it to my offensive linemen,' or, 'The credit should go to my teammates,' before it becomes run down."
"This goes back even to Pop Warner. You'd have a good game and they'd want you to give a couple of quotes for the newspaper, and I would let my other teammates be the ones to talk. That's how it was in high school, too. At Cal, I'd have my cousin, Robert Jordan, and Justin Forsett do it.
"Football's just always been hella fun to me, not expressing myself in the media. I don't do it to get attention; I just do it 'cause I love that (expletive)."
"He didn't take his helmet off on the sidelines in college because he didn't want the recognition.... "I would have to leave in the third quarter of games to pull the car around to the front of the locker room just so he and Rob (Lynch's cousin Robert Jordan) can jump out - no shower, no nothing - to leave before anyone can get to the locker room," -Rashaad Nunnally, a Cal track star who lived with Lynch in Berkeley.
7. Learn from your Mistakes.
-Lynch has had his share of set backs. In Buffalo he had a hit-and-run incident and a guilty plea to a misdemeanor gun charge. Then in 2012 in Seattle there was his DUI. But he didn't double down on these. He admitted he was wrong. After the DUI, he even showed up at his camp right after, and admitted to the kids what he did wrong and used it as a teachable moment for these youth.
According to an SI article, Bills' ex-coach Dick Jauron commended him for owning up to what he did:
"Lynch pleaded guilty to a hit-and-run charge after striking a pedestrian in 2008 in Buffalo, and in 2009 he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor weapons charge stemming from an offseason arrest in California. There were other, unpublicized run-ins that people close to Lynch characterize as profiling. His condo association busted him for having a dog, even though other tenants had dogs. And he was pulled over and cited for playing music too loudly—not on the street, but in the Bills’ stadium parking lot.
"When the legal stuff came up," Jauron says, "I needed to know how it happened, what he felt, what he was thinking. He never tried to pull the wool over my eyes. He would willingly admit errors and move on with his life."
Jauron, who still adores Lynch personally and professionally, was fired by the Bills in November 2009, and the new regime made a business decision to trade Lynch to Seattle."
8. Generosity to those around you.
-Lynch has been known to give his shoes to kids in Oakland who compliment them.
-At Cal, Lynch would take himself out of games so teammate Justin Forsett could get snaps (according to Forsett himself in an SI article).
-Also at Cal, if Lynch had a nice T-shirt that a teammate liked, he would simply take it off and give it away:
During his college years at Cal, if a teammate, friend or acquaintance complimented Lynch on the shirt he was wearing, he would hand it over. "He’s walking around on the street with his shirt off," says Ravens running back Justin Forsett, a former teammate of Lynch's at Cal and in Seattle. "Just because somebody said, ‘That’s a nice shirt.’
When Lynch was a sophomore, he struck up a conversation with Nick Sundberg, a freshman, one day as they stretched near each other. "I was intimidated by everybody because I was 17, I had no idea what to expect about college," says Sundberg, who has played for Washington since 2010. "I just stayed quiet, but he asked me where I was from, got to know me. He would do that with other freshman. He did that with me, and I was just a long snapper.
"We were at a banquet during his junior year, and my mom ran into him in the hallway on her way to the bathroom. And she came back 20 minutes later and she was like, ‘I met Marshawn and he was the nicest boy!’
"To this day her favorite NFL player is me. And her second favorite is Marshawn Lynch."
By his junior season, Lynch had rushed for nearly 2,000 yards, with 18 touchdowns, and was a Heisman candidate. The school launched a website promoting his bid: Marshawn10.com. But Lynch wasn’t interested. A national magazine went to Cal to profile him, but Lynch begged off the interview and put his cousin, wide receiver Robert Jordan, in front of the reporter instead. During games he would feign exhaustion and take himself out so Forsett, his backup, could get snaps.
"He did that almost every game at Cal, and even when we both played in Seattle," Forsett says. "I’m sure the coaches weren’t too pleased. But it wasn’t that blatant. They would think, OK, he needs a rest, but he never did.
"If it wasn’t for him taking himself out of games and allowing me to go in and play, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity."
-This from The MMQB
During Super Bowl week last February, the peak of Lynch’s dissonance with local and national media, he called Shone Gipson, a Bills assistant athletic trainer, to offer condolences on the death of his father. "For him to do that, with everything he had going on," Gipson says, "it meant a lot to me, and it showed a lot about who he is."
Before Jauron’s daughter, Amy, married Falcons media relations assistant Brian Cearns in 2012, Lynch called his buddies who played for Atlanta, including former Pro Bowl safety Lawyer Milloy, to make sure Cearns was an upstanding guy. Apparently satisfied, he never told Jauron that he'd vetted the coach’s future son-in-law.
"That’s priceless," Jauron said upon being told the news more than two years later. "That’s Marshawn."
-In 2007, just 3 months into his rookie season, Lynch paid for the funeral of his friend Robert Benjamin, 25, who was shot dead on a sidewalk of his old street while walking back from a park after playing basketball with friends.
9. Take the High Road.
Lynch is popular among NFL Players and has avoided feuds and on-field confrontations despite is physicality. When asked about the Richard Sherman/Michael Crabtree Feud he said "I play offense...I don’t know nothing about that." After the Patriots beat the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX, Patriots running back LeGarrette Blount who ran 14 times for a grand total of…40 whole yards rushing in that game held up a T-Shirt at the Pats’ parade that said B*TCH MODE in obvious reference to Lynch. Lynch didn't comment. Didn't say a word. Didn't tweet about it. Instead, Blount had to issue a public apology without Lynch lifting a finger. In a game against the Texans, a mic picked up some light hearted trash talk from Brian Cushing and Lynch having a complimentary exchange with him: When you take the high road, any criticism or trash talk towards you makes the other guy look silly.
10. Before all Else, be a good teammate first.
-Some quotes on Lynch...
- "One of the best teammates I’ve ever had." -Ex-Seahawks' Running Back Leon Washington.
- "One of the best teammates I’ve ever seen." -Ex-coach Dick Jauron.
- "One of the nicest guys I’ve ever played with." -Nick Sundberg, Cal teammate.
- "One of the best teammates (i've ever had)" -Seahawks' Defensive End Cliff Avril.
- "From Little League, to high school, to college, to the pros, he's the best teammate I've ever been around." - Seahawks' receiver Doug Baldwin.
- "The best teammate I’ve ever had." -Ex-Seahawks' Linebacker Malcolm Smith.
- "I think if a lot more people were like him, the NFL would be a better place." Seahawks' Defensive End Michael Bennett.
- "Great locker room guy" -Coy Wire, Bills teammate.
- "He's definitely a great teammate and a great man...That’s a guy you can go to and ask for any type of advice, and he knows what to say. He definitely is a very caring guy." Seahawks' Safety Kam Chancellor.
- "Oh, man, he’s a great teammate. And everyone in this locker room would tell you that. He likes to joke around. Yeah, he’s different than most guys. But he’s just a great teammate. Obviously, he’s a heck of a player. But you couldn’t ask for a better teammate and guy to have in the locker room." -Seahawks' Kicker Steven Hauschka.
Steven Hauschka missed three field goals for the first time in his life the last time the Seahawks were here, in a 19-3 win at Arizona on Dec. 21. After the third miss, Lynch came up to Hauschka, took his blue-and-green team beanie off his head and playfully shoved it on his kicker’s head, messing with Hauschka’s hair.
Then the running back patted his kicker on the back for encouragement. Both guys smiled.
"He was just trying to cheer me up. It means a lot to have my teammates on my side like that," Hauschka said.
"He’s one of the best teammates that anybody can ask for. One of my favorite players I’ve ever played with." -Ex-Seahawks Center Max Unger.
"He's a great dude, I love having him around my kids..." -Seahawks' Running Back Fred Jackson.
"He will babysit whenever I need him. It scared me at first. But..my kids love him." - Ex-Seahawks fullback Michael Robinson.
