![]() ![]() “It wasn’t exactly how you draw it up,” Hasselbeck says.Īfter Lynch broke through the mosh pit at the line of scrimmage, Saints cornerback Jabari Greer became the person with the best chance to bring him down. That wasn’t a mistake, but it did lead Lynch directly to two defenders. “For some reason carried me to the front side,” Lynch told NFL Films in April 2017. But even though the play was supposed to go left, Lynch likely would have had a better hole had he cut back and run to the right side of the center. And the Seahawks had to go left at the time because Hasselbeck’s left wrist was broken, meaning he couldn’t hand the ball off on runs to the right. The play was designed to go left (17 is an odd number, and odd numbers mean left in football-speak). The Timeline of the Legion of Boom’s Rise and Fall So the fact that it busted as far loose as that one did was pretty insane.” “Power is really designed to get 3, 5 yards, and not a whole lot more than that. “ is not designed to hit for a home run like that,” says former Seahawks offensive lineman Tyler Polumbus, who was the left guard on the play. But it’s not the kind of call that usually produces long touchdowns. It’s fitting that the Beast Quake came on a play named “power.” Power is a classic run play that is more than 100 years old. “There’s a saying,” Hasselbeck says, “that if we’re all wrong together, we’re right.” And yet, the result was literally earthshaking. Sure enough, when the Seahawks finally did call “17 Power,” seemingly everything went wrong. “ don’t think we’re good at it,” Hasselbeck told The Ringer last month. But Seattle’s coaches didn’t want to call it because the team kept screwing up the play in practice. Lynch had played in a power scheme when he was with the Buffalo Bills and had been begging to run power the whole game. The play that generated the run was called “17 Power,” a concept that the Seahawks had at their disposal but rarely used. Lynch flies into the end zone for a 67-yard touchdown to clinch the upset victory. Two more Saints defenders try for ankle tackles, but, well, you get the idea. Cornerback Tracy Porter tries to wrap up Lynch in the open field, but Lynch stops and throws Porter off him like a cowboy tossing a man through a saloon window. ![]() Another cornerback grabs onto Lynch’s waist, but Lynch drags him along until the defender loses his grip. A fourth defender reaches for Lynch’s right leg while a fifth reaches for his left. He breaks both tackles as a third defender takes aim at his ankles. It both encapsulates Lynch’s spirit as a runner-the combination of power and finesse that led to him being nicknamed “Beast Mode”-and just kicks ass.Īfter taking the ball from quarterback Matt Hasselbeck behind the line of scrimmage, Lynch is immediately met in the hole by two defenders. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more fun play to rewatch than Lynch’s 2011 wild-card run. “Earthquakes, their impact is instant,” Vidale says. The Beast Quake was an earthquake, but it was also a foreshock of what was to come. But in the 10 years since, the only franchise with more wins than Seattle is the New England Patriots. Before that play, the Seahawks were a mediocre group known for being the first team to make the playoffs with a 7-9 record. It is the specific moment players highlight to explain when the culture of Seattle football changed. ![]() But the Beast Quake also served as a turning point for the Seahawks franchise. In short, the fan reaction from Lynch’s touchdown registered as a man-made earthquake.įriday is the 10th anniversary of that legendary play, which eventually became known as the “Beast Quake.” It was one of the most epic runs in NFL history, both for its in-game significance and its legacy. Sure enough, it had registered seismic activity during the run, an effect from the tens of thousands of fans jumping up and down in celebration. Vidale checked readings from a seismograph located across the street from the stadium. “It just seemed like something that might register,” Vidale says. So he decided to drive to his lab to see whether there had been any seismic recordings. But the seismologist saw something more, too, in a clip recorded by a fan inside the Seahawks’ stadium: It seemed like the stadium itself was trembling.Īt the time, Vidale was the director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. Vidale, an earth sciences professor at the University of Washington, saw the same thing millions of others had already witnessed: Marshawn Lynch taking a handoff on second-and-10 and breaking almost a dozen tackles on his way to the end zone-a run that iced the Seahawks’ wild-card win over the defending champion New Orleans Saints after the 2010 season. John Vidale watched perhaps the greatest run in NFL history on YouTube an hour after it happened. ![]()
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