Arizona Cardinals’ Larry Foote delivers great take on Marshawn Lynch’s message
Feb 3, 2015, 9:29 PM | Updated: 9:30 pm
Like them or not, Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch’s dealings with the media — especially during the days leading up to Super Bowl XLIX — are memorable.
“I’m just here so I won’t get fined,” Lynch offered during his five-minute Media Day session last Tuesday.
Wednesday, the response morphed into, “you know why I’m here.”
On Thursday, the words changed, but the defiance didn’t.
“I mean all week, I done told y’all what’s up. And for some reason y’all continue to come back and do the same thing,” Lynch said. “I don’t know what story y’all trying to get out of me. I don’t know what image y’all trying to portray of me, but it don’t matter what y’all think, what y’all say about me because when I go home at night, the same people that I look in the face — my family, that I love — that’s all that really matters to me.
“So y’all could go and make up whatever you want to make up because I don’t say enough for y’all to go and put anything out on me. I’ll come to y’all event. Y’all shove cameras and microphones down my throat. But y’all mad at me. And if y’all ain’t mad at me, then what y’all here for?”
In addition to his aversion to answering questions, Lynch has also been fined by the league for grabbing his crotch after scoring touchdowns against the Arizona Cardinals in the regular season and the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game.
Many of his contemporaries, and others around the league, seem to put Lynch’s behavior in the “that’s just Marshawn being Marshawn” category.
Cardinals linebacker Larry Foote isn’t one of them.
During a radio interview on “The Cook and Poni Show” on The Fan 93.7 FM in Pittsburgh, Foote offered a salient criticism of Lynch’s tactics and went as far to say that he’s sending the wrong message to the youngsters in his foundation in Oakland.
“You hear in the media, he always mentions his foundation and what he likes to do for the city of Oakland,” Foote said. “I’m from the same type of urban environment that he’s from and the biggest message that he’s giving these kids, he might not want to admit it, is the hell with authority. ‘I don’t care, fine me, I’m gonna grab my crotch, I’m gonna do it my way.’ In the real world, it doesn’t work that way. It just doesn’t. How can you keep a job. I mean, you got these inner city kids, they don’t listen to teachers, they don’t listen to police officers, principals and these guys can’t even keep a job because they say ‘F’ authority.”
Kudos to Foote for saying what so many others haven’t.
Here’s the entire clip from The Fan 93.7 in Pittsburgh.
