Marshawn Lynch back ... like old times? George Kittle, more keys to Seahawks-49ers tonight
Beast Mode is back.
“The funniest thing I’ve experienced is when I walked into the meeting on Monday or Tuesday, he was actually sitting in my seat,” Seahawks offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer said.
“I didn’t really know how to react I was like ‘Umm, excuse me.’
“But he was great. He was like, ‘Is this your seat?’ and then he got up. I’ve enjoyed being around him. And the guy loves football.”
Marshawn Lynch has absolutely made himself at home while being back at Seahawks headquarters and practices.
“Merry New Year,” Lynch said this week, raising his hands like Eddie Murphy in Trading Places.
“It’s a great feeling to be back.”
Can Lynch make himself at home tonight in his first game for Seattle in nearly four full years? It’s perhaps the most impacting home game at CenturyLink Field since Lynch last played wore 24 for the Seahawks.
Coach Pete Carroll was coy on how much Lynch will play at running back tonight when the Seahawks (11-4) and San Francisco 49ers (12-3) play to decide the NFC West championship. But Lynch is playing. He will get the chance to show how much he has left at the age of 33 and out of football for the last 14 months.
“I don’t have any hesitation, at all, with what we are doing,” Carroll said Friday when asked about Lynch’s and fellow returning running back Robert Turbin’s workload for Sunday’s game six days after they signed back with Seattle.
“We didn’t teach them the whole notebook. We taught them the game plan. So that’s somewhat less. They handled everything. You’ll see the plan on how we are going to play these guys.”
Quarterback Russell Wilson said handing the ball in practices this week to Lynch and Turbin, who also will be playing his first NFL game in 14 months, felt like old times.
“They look ready,” Wilson said. “They look ready to go the whole game.”
So exactly how much of a workload is Lynch going to get in game one?
Carroll gave a big smile to that.
“Well, you are going to have to wait and find out,” he said.
The way Lynch has galvanized the beaten-up Seahawks already has U-turned the team’s vibe following its loss to Arizona last weekend.
“It was seamless. There may be a lot of unspoken thoughts and observations by the guys. Some of these guys were in sixth grade when they remember seeing him,” Carroll said. “I think we were talking about how DK (Metcalf) was 13 when he could remember seeing him for the first time, or something like that.
“It’s an effect on those guys so they’ve got to get over it. He’s such a good guy and he was so gracious about the way he re-entered. He made it easy on those guys.”
He’s the first of the key players to watch tonight in a large one in Seattle. A Seahawks win assures them a home playoff game. A loss and Seattle is headed to the NFC East champion for a wild-card round game next weekend, either at Philadelphia or Dallas.
The weather for tonight at CenturyLink Field: cloudy, no rain, no wind, 45 degrees. Very good for late December in Seattle.
Seattle must run to slow down Nick Bosa, Arik Armstead and DeForest Buckner flying in on Wilson trying to throw.
Lynch and another former Seahawks Super Bowl back, Turbin, signed this week to back-fill Seattle losing running backs Chris Carson, Rashaad Penny and C.J. Prosise to season-ending injuries.
Still, expect rookie Travis Homer to be the starter. The sixth-round pick from Miami got his first career carries in the offense just two games ago. Now he’s the first man in a run game essential to the entire offense—and Seattle’s playoffs.
“The coolest thing about Travis is if you watch they way he worked week one, week four, week eight, week ten on the scout team, you saw how important it was to him. He was always ready. He was always working,” Schottenheimer said. “He was always finishing his runs. He was not just going through the motions. ‘Oh I’m just going to do this to get through.’...
“That’s when you know it’s important to a player. Little chance of getting in the game. Playing on special teams. Out there, when he was the running back and he was playing the role of some of the great backs that we faced this year, he really bought into it and really worked like crazy to get better. That’s when you know a guy’s got the right stuff. And he certainly does.”
Will Jadeveon Clowney be back in the Seahawks’ pass rush? Can he possibly be disruptive as he was last month against the 49ers, now with a core-muscle injury that’s kept him out the last two games and three of the last five?
Clowney is playing, as he vowed on Tuesday.
He was the catalyst for Seattle sacking Jimmy Garoppolo five times and hitting him 10 times in the Seahawks’ overtime win in Santa Clara last month. Clowney was a large reason San Francisco committed three turnovers that night. The Seahawks need a pass rush to help their secondary that is likely to be without key free safety Quandre Diggs against tonight.
Diggs is officially questionable to play because of his high-ankle sprain. Carroll said it will take Diggs passing “miraculous circumstances” before kickoff to play.
The Seahawks need Clowney. The Nov. 11th Clowney.
Diggs’ high-ankle sprain has been a huge problem for Seattle. It’s even bigger tonight.
The 49ers will have a game-changing force Sunday they did not have last month against the Seahawks. George Kittle is an exquisite tight end that catches like a wide receiver, then runs like a freight train. He has two 100-yard receiving games, a 36-yard catch and run last weekend in San Francisco’s win over the Rams and touchdowns in three of the five games since his return from knee and ankle injuries.
Seattle has been using Lano Hill and, less, rookie Marquise Blair in the two games Diggs has missed. That’s had strong safety Bradley McDougald back more off the line to help Hill and Blair at the back of the defense.
Niners coach Kyle Shanahan is going to exploit this Seahawks’ weakness with one of the most dominant receivers in the NFL.
This story was originally published December 29, 2019 at 10:58 AM.
