Imagine you are Marshawn Lynch.

This may seem impossible. You are you, and Marshawn Lynch can seem both superhuman and subhuman. He is not like us, it would seem. He is a half-crazed dysfunctional seeming person, redeemed by the peculiarities of gridiron football. True but not true.

The passions and prejudices of Lynch, the fears and talents of Lynch, are unlike yours, but human life isn't so different, even at its spectrum ends. Lynch feels pride. Lynch feels anger. Lynch fights, and if we do not know what it's like to rush the football at the NFL level, we do know what it's like to fight, to battle, to work your ass off and unfailingly. We know those inglorious moments we battled tirelessly for, knowing no one may notice, but knowing we can not turn passion on and off. We must be passionate to succeed, and when that passion may become glory is never known ahead of time.

You are Marshawn Lynch, your team is winning the Super Bowl 29-0 with 4:41 left in the third quarter, and you are about to run an inside zone that nearly fails spectacularly because of the screw-up of your often screwing up teammate, Max Unger. You could throttle down. You could capitulate. You could think the difference between fighting your ass off for no gain or accepting a loss of two as trivial, and especially now.

But you are Marshawn Lynch.

Push is pretty good but Unger loses Sylvester Williams almost right away.

Correction: right away.

Sweezy shoots out and kinda clears Malik Jackson, but sort of fails at that too.

It is time. Prepare yourself. It is time for you to be amazing. You plant your left foot while sorta dragging the right. You then drop low as if to brace for impact.

But this move is dual purpose and perfectly timed. Sylvester Williams has attempted to close from your right, but you have left him grasping at air. His arrogance will lead him face down to the turf.

You then drive off your left foot in a runner’s lunge straight and into a non-existent hole. Drawing your other foot level, you bob and re-center your gravity to, let’s say it, carry and drag Nate Irving. You are Marshawn Lynch. You may be the most skilled and practiced man on earth at carrying and dragging man and men.

The Russell Okung - Paul McQuistan duo is clearing space. Alvin Bailey, you think that's that dude's name, has utterly botched the block on Shaun Phillips, and is turf-bound. J.R. Sweezy has pulled to become a lead blocker. Breno Giacomini has to angle inward to engage Jackson but fails. He does land a nasty finishing block near-after the fact.

Your blocking has failed. Your opponent has sold out to stop the run, to stop you, and punish you, and strike you with the vengeance of a defense, a team, a city humiliated. And you are wrapped and held prone to on-rushing defenders.

Irving is on your back. Phillips is closing from the front side to strike you as hard he can, and with a running start, in the desperate hope of maybe jarring the ball loose or at least finishing the tackle. But you curl your abdomen, the only part of your body free to attack, and buck Phillips, beat him back and down face-bound to the turf.

Now it's Duke Ihenacho you fend off. And ...

Let's leave the ending open. I prefer to think of Lynch still struggling never tackled, not victim to the rats clawing and scraping and tearing at him.

To be Marshawn Lynch is to be a great warrior who fights a bloodless battle, a battle without body count or permanent accomplishment. A sport. To those who are not fighters, it can be a vain, foolish battle and ultimately a battle for nothing but the entertainment of strangers. But there is great joy in exercising greatness when it is within you. To be great, if only momentarily and in-a flash snuffed out, jumped atop, buried under multitude of strivers and strugglers. To be great, to be violent and beautiful, graceful and punishing, transient yet inexorable like Achilles, is to be Marshawn Lynch.

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