Young running back is more uneasy today, in Cal's empty Memorial Stadium, than he ever is playing in the house when it's packed. Dressed in full uniform, he descends the stairs and steps onto the field where he recently ran for a 95-yard touchdown in a spring scrimmage. He looks around sheepishly as the women's lacrosse team files by on its way to practice. No one told Marshawn Lynch this photo shoot was going to take place in public.
Lynch stifles an uncomfortable laugh. None of this is his choice, and he's wondering if he's up to it. He leaps and grabs the goalpost once, twice, three times, halfheartedly hanging in postdunk punctuation. Lynch has invited along his cousin, sophomore receiver Robert Jordan, to lessen the tension, but he's not doing his job. To be fair, nothing could change the fact that Lynch would rather not be here. Not in front of these cameras. Not in front of those lacrosse players. Not in the spotlight.
That ship, unfortunately, has sailed. These days, everyone's eyes are on Marshawn Lynch.
Last season, everybody was focused on teammate J.J. Arrington, the nation's only 2,000-yard rusher-and his surprising Bears. But Arrington is gone now, as are quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Cal's top two receivers and the tight end. So as Lynch looks toward his second season, he finds himself front and center for a team that is now expected to cast shadows, not hide in them.
Their inevitable star may be happiest when he is blending in, but the Cal Bears-whether they say it out loud or not-need Lynch to stand out more than any other player in the nation.
LYNCH IS HUMBLE, and not the phony humble of TV evangelists or Bobby Bowden before FSU lays the smackdown on Wake. Spend 15 minutes alone with him, and he says very, very little. Spend an afternoon with him and Jordan, and he talks a little more-and laughs a lot more.
During a break in the photo session, Lynch, still dressed in his blue and gold, sits in an empty banquet room. His helmet rests atop an oval table. Jordan is at his side, cloaked in baggy gray sweats and white shell-toed adidas. Shared genes aside, the two are physical opposites. Lynch, just under six feet, is a squat 215 pounds. He has chocolate skin, a square jaw, broad shoulders and short braids. Jordan, the same height as his cousin, is a rail-thin 160 pounds and light-skinned. His narrow face disappears when he pulls up the hood of his sweatshirt. And yet, he's the enforcer. "You wanna get to me, you gotta go through him," says Lynch.
Lynch keeps his life simple, filling his days with school, football and Madden 2005. This summer, the cousins are sharing an apartment in Berkeley and driving to Lynch's old stomping ground, Oakland Tech, for daily workouts. Lynch has only one off-the-field goal for the next few months. "We gotta teach you to dance," he says, with a laugh in Jordan's direction, "so you can get some honeys."
Lynch's voice turns clear and booming when he talks about a punt his cousin took to the house for nearby Hayward High. "Man, you must have touched each sideline four times!" he bellows. "This dude is unreal!" But when asked for his own most memorable play, Lynch's eyes quickly find the floor.
The silence is Jordan's cue. "Oh, the Stanford game," he begins. "Man, you ran like a hundred yards on that play." With Cal ahead 13-3 in the third quarter of last year's Big Game, Lynch took the ball and headed off left tackle. Stuffed at the line, Lynch wriggled free from an ankle tackle and burst toward the sideline. He screwed cornerback Stanley Wilson into the turf with a stutter, then cut across the middle of the field, all the way back to his right. He didn't even break stride as he guffawed at the sight of Rodgers attempting a downfield block. The 55-yard score blew open a 41-6 rout and blew apart any last hope for anonymity. For the season, Lynch toted the rock 71 times for 628 yards and a Pac-10-best 8.8 yards per carry.
Gutsy runs and glitzy stats aside, Lynch may never get the notice his talent deserves. Cal's conference is owned by USC, and Lynch shares a position with the best all-around player in the country, the Trojans' Reggie Bush. But this wrongplace, wrong-time reality doesn't concern him at all. "The hype, the Heisman stuff, the magazine stuff, it means nothing to me," he says. "I just want to play ball, win championships and get my degree."
Lynch might even get lucky and fly under the radar for a series or two this fall while fans figure out he's traded in his No. 24 jersey for No. 10. It's the one senior WR Burl Toler wore last year and the one Lynch wore at Tech. "A number don't make me," he says, pausing for a second before flashing a bashful grin and confessing, "but, yeah, it does make me feel more comfortable." See, Jordan wears 11 and yet another cousin, Virdell Larkins, a freshman corner, wears 9. "I messed up when I went out of order," says a faux-repentant Lynch.
Lynch, Jordan and Larkins—the self-proclaimed Three Amigos—came to Cal as a package deal. The Oakland trio actually had their sights set on Oregon, until Jordan's recruiter let slip that Lynch's subpar SATs might keep him out of the school. But the nation's second-best back (behind Adrian Peterson) had other choices. "It was getting close to signing day," Lynch says. "When Oregon came to visit my cousin's house, things were said. So we all talked it out and came here."
Delton Edwards, who coached Lynch and Larkins at Oakland Tech, thinks his old star landed right where he should have. With Arrington and Rodgers in Berkeley, Lynch didn't have to take over right away. "He doesn't really want to be a leader," Edwards says. "But Marshawn has a charisma that attracts people." He compares Lynch to another prodigy. "You know how Magic didn't want to step on Kareem's toes when he came into the league?" the coach says. "That's kind of how Marshawn is."
Edwards will be the first to warn you not to confuse Lynch's humility with meekness. He learned as much in Lynch's final high school game, the 2003 Silver Bowl against rival Skyline. Toward the end of the third quarter, Skyline had surged to a 41-26 lead, and Edwards and one of his assistants began to argue on the sideline. Lynch stepped between them. "What's wrong with you guys?" he shouted. "You quittin' on us? It looks like you quittin' on us!" Tech promptly scored 29 unanswered points, capped by a 46-yard run by Lynch that sealed the school's first league title since 1951. It was his sixth touchdown of the game. "Marshawn is one of a kind," says Edwards. "I'll never get another kid like him."
Bears running backs coach Ron Gould may feel the same, but with Lynch's workload about to triple, he's not as quick to admit it. Gould figures Cal's horse is still more colt than Clydesdale. "I don't think Marshawn is ready for all the attention," he says. The more Gould talks, the more animated he becomes: "His strengths just jump out at you. He has the best balance of anyone I've seen, and he's naturally strong." Lynch benches 350 pounds and has power-cleaned 330, impressive weight for a 19-year-old who has never competitively lifted.
"A little he-man," Gould calls him.
"Marshawn is in a good position now," says Arrington, a second-round pick of the Arizona Cardinals. "The running backs have to carry the team." But that's a far cry from carrying the ball in spot duty, which requires a finite amount of conditioning and focus. Get in, do your thing, head to the sideline. A workhorse back, as Arrington was and as Lynch will be, can't leave anything in reserve. There are no breaks, and no refuge. Lynch's refuse-to-go-down style works fine with fresh legs, but when fatigue sets in, fumbles may too. Staying locked in for a play or a series is a lot easier than doing it for an entire possession, much less a game. And now that the offense has lost its stars, fans are going to expect too much. Lynch is the kind of kid who will try to deliver.
Arrington definitely set an imposing standard with his team-record 2,018 yards. And Lynch has admitted to thinking of Arrington as a role model. "When I see J.J. do something great," he said after last year's Stanford game, "I want to copycat off him." But Gould wants Lynch to set his own goals this season, not chase after someone else's. "It's a huge transition between coming off the bench and starting," he says. "I told him there shouldn't be any added pressure. He shouldn't feel like the weight of the team is on his shoulders."
Oh, but it is. No matter what anyone says to ease the kid's mind, if Cal is to build on last season's momentum, it will be with Lynch as its foundation. And not only will Lynch need to be consistently brilliant, he'll have to be callous, too. The quarterback—either juco arrival Joseph Ayoob or redshirt freshman Nate Longshore—will count on him for
protection as well as big plays. And Lynch struggles with the cut block. He remembers his debut against Air Force not for his 92 yards and a score (on just seven carries), but for a hard shot Rodgers took on his watch. "I tried to block the linebacker on a blitz," he says. "But I didn't do so well."
Lynch is hard on himself because he and his teammates can no longer settle. A winning season is one thing; a winning program is quite another. Can Lynch, coach Jeff Tedford and the newly rabid fans who raised $40 million to overhaul Memorial Stadium really believe there is no pressure?
"Consistency is the key now," Tedford says. He points to the Bears' steady progression of wins: seven in 2002, eight in 2003, 10 last season. "We want to keep ourselves at the top of the conference and be one of the elite teams in the nation." But nobody is pretending the measuring stick is a rushing total or a particular number of victories. For Cal, the bar has been set 300 miles to the south. Over the past two years, the Bears are the only team on USC's schedule that wasn't punked by the mighty Trojans at least once. In 2003, they handed USC its sole loss, and last October, a goal-line stand separated Cal from the eventual national champs.
LYNCH HAS ALL summer to work on hardening his heart, firming up his blocks—and getting used to the spotlight. But right now it's time for more pictures. Back on the field, Lynch stands under the goalpost and, after looking over at Jordan for approval, decides to have some fun. He leaps up and grabs the crossbar with his right hand. This time, he hangs there, mugging for the camera, legs tucked underneath—Shaq-style.
When he returns to earth, Marshawn Lynch looks like he's comfortable just where he is. ?