NFL Week 5: Let's Get Caught Up

The National Football League season is already in its fifth week. The season, entering its second quarter, has been a strange one, particularly if you are Seahawks fan. At this point last year, the hard times were ahead for Seattle; now, Seahawks fans have essentially dodged a season-ending bullet with Kam Chancellor's ball punch of a paydirt-bound Megatron on Monday night.

At 2-2, things could be worse, though it is a long shot to think that the situation will improve going into Cincinnati this Sunday. Marshawn Lynch is out again with a strained hamstring. Seattle is going to have to find a way to run the ball; otherwise, Russell Wilson will be eaten alive by the Bengals front seven. It will be a good test of the Seahawks defense. I can't think of a more complete offense right now than Andy Dalton's. A.J. Green is awesome, and the Cinci running-back combo of Jeremy Hill and Giovani Bernard is potent.

Let's get caught up on the season so far. First, two general comments. A guy, a labor politico of sorts, who survives by peddling seminars to unions, came into the office recently. He sat in the little reception area in front of my work station and waited for the head of the labor council to get off the phone and come out of her office and greet him. While he was waiting I took the opportunity to ask him, "Are you a Seahawks fan?"

This is my litmus test, a type of loyalty oath. Most people, believe it or not, say yes and then proceed to break down with acuity recent action. There are a few who beg off and say, "Well, yeah, but I don't really watch the games." This labor politico, which was surprising to me, admitted up front that he didn't follow the Seahawks, quite a liability for someone whose business is telling labor leaders how to connect with their membership.

I said to the guy, "Imagine if there was just one-quarter the interest in our political process as there was in the National Football League."

He stared back at me in a perturbed, confused manner. He didn't get it. The fact is that right now the athletes of the National Football League -- Kam Chancellor, Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, A.J. Green, et al. -- are in the cultural vanguard. When I wore my Beast Mode hoodie on Friday, young people turned their heads as I passed by.

The music industry has been debased along with film. Neither can lead the masses as they used to. It is a dystopian world in which we live. But the gridiron is an idealized space where the heroes are untarnished (except for the New England Patriots). I can't remember a time -- and I've been following the NFL since 1975, when I was in sixth grade -- when the cultural cache of professional football athletes was this full.

Prior to last Monday night's Detroit-vs.-Seattle match-up I was in the grocery store. I live close to downtown in what many would describe as a hipster neighborhood. Never before have I seen so many young hipsters decked out in NFL jerseys. In the past, allegiance to the NFL home team was the provenance of the white, suburban working class. No longer. After Seattle's overtime Week 1 loss to St. Louis I went out for a run and was surprised to see the number of young people in Seahawks regalia glumly streaming out of house parties. Something different is happening here.

That's the first point. The National Football League is of enormous cultural importance now in the United States. I take it as proof that our political system is almost entirely bankrupt; the rapturous allegiance to the NFL is the observe of this bankruptcy, a hunger to believe in something that is authentic. And what is more real than a physical contest? Until our political system becomes more democratic and begins to address the many concerns of working people, I'm sure the NFL will continue its meteoric rise.

If the first point is that the NFL represents the cutting edge culturally in this country, then the second point is that it is simultaneously able to tap into an amazingly nourishing pool of nostalgia for a time when things were stable and prosperous, when every man was safely ensconced in his castle (and securely positioned in front of his television, usually in the fortress of the suburbs). I speak here of Thursday Night Football, at least the first nine weeks that are televised on CBS before retreating behind the paywall of NFL Network.

There is something about being a bachelor alone in his apartment at the end of the work week watching a primetime professional football game as the sun goes down and the room goes dark, particularly when the contests are close, as they have been the last two Thursdays -- Ravens vs. Steelers; Colts vs. Texans; it is a feeling of contentment, order, and tranquility, a lifeline back to previous generations of bachelors alone in t-shirts bathed in the phosphorescent glow from the TV screen, like a fictional Paul Drake watching a nighttime telecast of Norm Van Brocklin's Los Angeles Rams. One sleeps well after a night like that.

But this Sunday the story is about the unbeaten teams that remain. Let's hope the Seahawks knock off the Bengals; the loathsome Cowboys wallop the villainous Patriots; the Falcons keep rolling; the Raiders whip the Broncos; and the Packers best the Rams. This would leave three teams undefeated: Green Bay, Atlanta and Carolina (because of a bye).

Oh, and I wouldn't mind seeing the Lions give the Cardinals another loss.

In Praise of Marshawn Lynch: Dave Zirin Contrasts Beast Mode with NFL Commissioner Goodell

I have always felt a connection to Marshawn Lynch. It probably has something to do with the fact that we both went to Berkeley. Fortunately, the year or two I was in the habit of watching college football on Saturdays (usually hung over) corresponded to the time when Lynch was running for the Golden Bears. What impressed me about Lynch in those Cal games was his speed, his power -- yes, absolutely -- but more than anything it was his ability to absorb huge hits and keep on going. Remarkable, noteworthy, unusual.

I loathed the Holmgren/Hasselbeck Seahawks. So when Pete Carroll made a trade with Buffalo to bring Lynch to town my opinion of the team did a 180. I was quickly made a believer in the franchise.

Make no mistake. Marshawn Lynch turned the franchise around, helped remake it into something entirely unique. That's why it is nice to see Beast Mode getting the superstar treatment in the run up to Super Bowl Sunday. So powerful is his starshine that it has nearly erased everything else this week -- Tom Brady, Deflategate, Bob Kraft's Patriots, you name it. It has been all Marshawn.

It will be interesting to see if the baleful brainiac Belichik will bite down on the hook and structure his defensive game plan around stopping Lynch. This is what most teams do. And this is the brier patch which Seattle loves to lead opponents; it is how Seattle wins games. With defenses keying on Lynch, Russell Wilson makes the big moves. Russell Wilson might not be your classic drop-back passer, but he is brilliant running an offense where he is not the main attraction.

Speaking of main attraction, Dave Zirin latest piece, Marshawn Lynch and Roger Goodell: Compare and Contrast, is a brilliant exploration of the relative merits to the National Football League offered by its chief executive and one of its star players. I quote it in its entirety.

 Go Seahawks! To Victory!

Marshawn Lynch and Roger Goodell: Compare and Contrast 

Dave Zirin on January 27, 2015 - 8:43 PM ET

Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell have something glaringly obvious in common. They both struggle mightily speaking on camera. That, however, is where the similarities end.

Marshawn Lynch, who thousands of people pay to watch play on Sundays, earned a base salary of $6 million last year.* Roger Goodell, who no fan would put down money to do anything other than perhaps be hooked up to a lie detector, made $44 million.

Marshawn Lynch is financially forced by the league to talk to the media, ideally to mouth the same clichés every other player is hardwired to repeat. He spoke at the Super Bowl Media Day this week and twenty-nine times repeated seven words that speak the truth of a league that demands players to double as corporate pitchmen: “I’m here so I won’t get fined.” If Lynch hadn’t made an appearance, he would have faced a gobsmacking $500,000 fine.

Roger Goodell is under no obligation to talk to the public, even though he oversees a league that has received billions in corporate welfare and whose central office is designated by the federal government as a tax-free nonprofit. As Richard Sherman, Marshawn Lynch’s teammate who has never been uncomfortable in front of a microphone, said, Lynch should not be obligated to speak “any more than the commissioner is obligated to speak.”

Marshawn Lynch has also been fined $20,000 by the NFL for grabbing his crotch, which is Lynch’s customary move when he scores a particularly explosive touchdown. Roger Goodell’s league sells a framed collage that includes the very image of Lynch tugging his testicles for $149.95. While Lynch writes checks, Goodell profits on both ends, while also perhaps grabbing his junk.

Marshawn Lynch, who it’s been theorized by friends has a social anxiety disorder, is mocked mercilessly by the media for his lack of desire to speak to them and his inability to sound like Peyton Manning. Roger Goodell, whose only disorder is inordinate blushing when challenged, receives no such casual barbs. He has actually felt some media heat this year over his years of covering up cases of domestic violence. Yet despite every misstep, he was still praised by on a primetime NFL playoff broadcast by announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth for his “integrity” and making domestic violence “part of the national conversation.” (This is, as I’ve written elsewhere, like praising Goldman Sachs for making corporate greed “part of the national conversation.”)

Richard Sherman put it perfectly in a piece he wrote this week for Sports Illustrated. “Under Goodell the league continues to put players like Marshawn Lynch in a position to be mocked by the media, which seems to get a kick out of seeing people struggle on camera. As teammates we’re angry because we know what certain people do well and we know what they struggle with. Marshawn’s talking to the press is the equivalent of putting a reporter on a football field and telling him to tackle Adrian Peterson.”

Sherman also pointed out exactly why so many players—particularly black players—hold a hostility toward an older contemptuous sports media, writing, “Some of the same people slamming Marshawn for not talking are just as likely to condemn the Browns’ Andrew Hawkins and Johnson Bademosi for protesting police brutality with T-shirts. They want to hear us speak, but only if we’re saying something they want to hear.”

There is one last similarity between both men: they both generate gobs of money for the thirty-one billionaires that run the league. The difference however is that Marshawn Lynch will be thrown on the scrapheap as soon as he no longer has the ability to perform. Roger Goodell continues to be paid long after he has proven in practice that he is a liability to players, their families, and the future of the league. I would love to be able to pull off a “Lucy and Ricky” scenario and for one week, start Roger Goodell at running back for the Seahawks and put Marshawn Lynch in the Commissioner’s chair. Seattle would surely suffer. The league, however, would register an immediate improvement. If nothing else, on game day, we’d all get a whole lotta Skittles.