Seahawks Coach Mike Macdonald: Marshawn Lynch ‘Part Of Our Team DNA’

Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald never coached Marshawn Lynch, but he has long been a fan of the former All-Pro running back’s game.

So much so, in fact, that Lynch’s mindset is, as Macdonald put it during his weekly appearance on Seattle Sports 710AM, the Seahawks Legend is “part of our team DNA.”

In particular, Macdonald explained, there’s a certain, not-so-radio-friendly Lynch quote that the team uses to help define its mentality.

“We’ve met a couple of times,” Macdonald told Mike Salk and Brock Huard. “And personally, how are you not a huge fan of Marshawn Lynch? It’s funny, we talk about team DNA and who we want to be, and there’s a quote he said out there that I can’t repeat on a radio show, but everyone else knows what I’m talking about. That’s part of our team DNA. He’s right in the thick of it.”

For those not familiar with it, the quote in question came from a 2016 interview Lynch did with 60 Minutes Sports after he retired for the first time following the 2015 season. In the interview with Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim, Lynch explained how his uncle, former NFL cornerback Lorenzo Lynch, helped instill the mindset that would become known as “Beast Mode” in him at a young age.

“I think that’s when it just clicked in my mind that if you just run through somebody’s face, a lot of people ain’t going to be able to take that over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again,” Lynch said. “They’re just not going to want that.”

Wertheim then asked, “You think there’s a deeper metaphor there?”