Marshawn Lynch appears for short session at Media Day, avoids major fine

Marshawn Lynch and Media Day... a match made somewhere other than heaven. (Matt Slocum/AP) NEWARK, N.J. -- Those who have covered Marshawn Lynch since he was

Doug Farrar | Jan 28, 2014

Marshawn Lynch appears for short session at Media Day, avoids major fine /

Marshawn Lynch and Media Day... a match made somewhere other than heaven. (Matt Slocum/AP)

NEWARK, N.J. -- Those who have covered Marshawn Lynch since he was traded to the Seattle Seahawks have been frustrated at times with his unwillingness to deal with the media in a public, on-the-record way. Some players would prefer to avoid that particular Pandora's Box, and Lynch is definitely one -- the Pro Bowl running back doesn't like talking about himself (the better he performs in a game, the sooner he's out of the locker room afterward), and there may be an element of fear that the press will write their own stories about him no matter what he says.

Of course, it doesn't help when Lynch doesn't talk, and the media is left with nothing to do but that. The NFL stepped in earlier this month and fined Lynch $50,000 for refusing to speak with the media throughout the 2013 season. His first subsequent media session on Jan. 5 clocked in at about 90 seconds and featured a host of monosyllabic responses.

The NFL started to back off on the fine structure until Lynch threatened to go dark on Media Day, potentially opening himself to the reversal of the suspension of that fine, with an extra $50,000 thrown in for good measure. Lynch was not assigned a podium for Seattle's Media Day at the Prudential Center, but he did speak ... for a little over six minutes, before backing up and backing off. He later conversed with Deion Sanders of the NFL Network for a couple minutes, and that was that.

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However, whatever Lynch did was enough to reportedly avoid any further fine from the NFL. When asked by Sanders whether he preferred to let his play do the talking, he responded simply and definitively.

"I'm all 'bout that action, boss," Lynch told Sanders.

Published Jan 28, 2014

DOUG FARRAR

SI.com contributing NFL writer and Seattle resident Doug Farrar started writing about football locally in 2002, and became Football Outsiders' West Coast NFL guy in 2006. He was fascinated by FO's idea to combine Bill James with Dr. Z, and wrote for the site for six years. He wrote a game-tape column called "Cover-2" for a number of years, and contributed to six editions of "Pro Football Prospectus" and the "Football Outsiders Almanac." In 2009, Doug was invited to join Yahoo Sports' NFL team, and covered Senior Bowls, scouting combines, Super Bowls, and all sorts of other things for Yahoo Sports and the Shutdown Corner blog through June, 2013. Doug received the proverbial offer he couldn't refuse from SI.com in 2013, and that was that. Doug has also written for the Seattle Times, the Washington Post, the New York Sun, FOX Sports, ESPN.com, and ESPN The Magazine. He also makes regular appearances on several local and national radio shows, and has hosted several podcasts over the years. He counts Dan Jenkins, Thomas Boswell, Frank Deford, Ralph Wiley, Peter King, and Bill Simmons as the writers who made him want to do this for a living. In his rare off-time, Doug can be found reading, hiking, working out, searching for new Hendrix, Who, and MC5 bootlegs, and wondering if the Mariners will ever be good again.