Video: Life without Marshawn Lynch

Marshawn Lynch has retired. The Seattle Seahawks need now have to find a way to replace his presence both on and off the field.

In the video above, the guys from 120Sports discuss what they think is the biggest question mark in the NFC West. It turns out that they’re concerned about what the Seahawks will look like as they adapt to life without Marshawn Lynch.

On one hand, the guys seem to have missed that age had already taken its toll on Lynch. Marshawn averaged just 3.8 yards per carry last season. He looked slower, and didn’t break tackles at quite the same rate he had in previous seasons.

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The Seahawks offense was actually better when Lynch was hurt, which was a significant development for Seattle. Part of that was the emergence of Thomas Rawls, who led the NFL if yards per carry. Part of that was because that feeding Lynch the ball led to too many third and long situations.

On the other hand, Lynch’s presence in Seattle was more than just his on-field productivity. Lynch was a tone setter for the entire team. John Schneider called him the “heartbeat” of the Seahawks.

This isn’t just meaningless platitudes either. Pete Carroll credited Lynch for changing the team’s culture. Lynch’s physical running style embodied everything the Seahawks wanted to be. When Lynch got the running game going, even the defense would get excited and play with a more physical edge.

So now the Seahawks must adapt to not having Lynch’s presence on the roster. We’ll have to wait and see if they can play with the same edge without their tone setter.

Luckily, they got a taste of life without Lynch last season. This isn’t going to be something new that they haven’t had to deal with before. The early results suggest that the Seahawks will be just fine.

Some of Seattle’s best games came without both Lynch and Rawls getting carries. Even with Christine Michael as the featured back, Seattle had no trouble with setting the right tone in their games.

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We won’t know for sure if the Seahawks will be able to life without Lynch until the regular season begins. For now though, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to worry.