This all started inside a modest apartment in Flint, Mich. That's where Thomas Rawls' mom, Deadra Whitley, told the first Marshawn Lynch story.
The first time she met Lynch, she kept reminding herself to keep it together. She hugged him, told herself not to squeeze so tight, then asked for a second hug. She told Lynch he could call her Dee; he refused.
"I'm calling you Momma," he said.
But that's not the best part of the story. After the Seahawks signed her son as an undrafted free agent, she kept asking if he'd seen Marshawn. When Lynch arrived, he didn't say anything. Just watched him.
Finally, he came up to him. "I see it in you," he said.
When Deadra surprised Thomas with a visit later that year, Lynch told her not to worry about her son, who she calls Ty.
"The way he talked about Ty, as a parent, I was just so blown away with how he embraced him," she said. "He really wanted to help him. He saw something in him. People are cheated when they don't get to meet him on a real level."
Lynch is no longer with the Seahawks, but he is not entirely gone, either. He keeps popping up. I'll explain what I mean after one more story.
A few weeks after Deadra Whitley told her story, former Seahawks receiver Ricardo Lockette told his. Both were unprompted.
Lockette's story started in a hospital room in Dallas on the day his football career ended. He couldn't move his neck. Offensive lineman Russell Okung was on his right, Lynch was on his left. Lynch made Lockette laugh so hard that Lockette eventually told him: "Bro, you're going to kill me! I haven't had surgery yet."
"He just told me, 'Don't be in here crying,' " Lockette said. " 'Don't be doing all that crying because Beast Mode don't cry, and if you cry, I'm going to cry.' I can visually picture that. I enjoyed that."
So I wondered if players in the Seahawks' locker room had Lynch stories. Did he still mean something? I told every player I talked to what I'd heard from Deadra Whitley and Ricardo Lockette and asked if anything came to mind. That's all. I even said I didn't want them to force anything.
This is what they said.
