Ever wonder what it must be like to spend a day hanging out with Marshawn Lynch? Sure, most of the world has seen Beast Mode terrorize defensive lines on Sundays and avoid the media at all costs, but that’s just the athlete side of the ex-NFL running back. What’s he like sans jersey, pads, or cleats?
Well, for this year’s Digital Trends Car of the Year awards, we found out. As a huge car fan, the former Seattle Seahawks enigma showed up to spend a few hours “testing” various autos with us, alongside Tim Walbridge of 503 Motoring. From the moment Lynch set foot inside his first tester — a Volvo XC90 — he shed his notoriously camera-shy persona and let loose. Unlike at the notorious Super Bowl XLIX media session he appeared at solely to avoid getting fined, Beast Mode was surprisingly open and had us cracking up. And maybe wincing a bit — Lynch pulled no punches on the language.
“Oh I wanna try too, bruh,” Lynch exclaimed as Walbridge seemingly rallied the XC90 in a vacant dirt parking lot. “Oh, hell yeah! Oh, you can drift this motherf****r? I like this.”
Between his colorful language, insightful anecdotes (like the many uses for the front seat of a Tesla), and a few spirited dance moves, it’s clear Lynch wasn’t holding back. Who knew cars got people to drop their guard and have fun? Well, Seinfeld seems to have it figured out.
“But see though, you know I gotta crash dummy car, too,” Lynch told us, obviously not referencing his ’86 Honda Civic. “It’s a [Lamborghini] Aventador. That’s a crash dummy, you know, my bucket.”
As it turns out, the random ramblings of the man behind the wheel shed a lot of light on the man beneath the football helmet. Just a kid from Oakland who got a crack at big league football, Marshawn Lynch — like all of us — is still a kid at heart who’s just trying to have a little fun.
