PHOENIX — Marshawn Lynch was “here so I don’t get fined.”
We learned that 29 times over four minutes and 51 seconds, in fact.
Super Bowl 49’s Media Day/circus/theater of the absurd Tuesday at the U.S. Airways Center also had clowns. It had Spanish-speaking puppets screaming “Go Tom!” — or was it “Vamos Tomas!”? — to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. It had an sizeable male interviewer wearing nothing but a barrel and a cowboy hat, Richard Sherman salsa dancing — and Cliff Avril summing it up perfectly.
“This is nuts,” the Seahawks’ defensive end said.
And that was just at the start.
People paid $32 per ticket — $22 with a military discount. Many did so to sit in the arena’s upper deck. To observe interviews, to which they could listen on headphones they got on the way in.
As always, Media Day was light on nuts-and-bolts of Sunday’s huge game.
It was crushingly heavy on fluff.
A woman tried to hit Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman with Patriots owner Robert Kraft and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell not being as buddy-buddy as the Seahawks cornerback said Sunday. She cited pictures of Goodell at Kraft’s house before this month’s AFC title game in New England. Sherman said that upon the team’s arrival here, his evidence to opine no league punishment will come out of its investigation of the Patriots’ deflated balls in that game.
She asked him “did you do your research?”
“It’s not difficult to do your research,” Sherman fired back. “I obviously did. In which way was I incorrect?”
The woman went on with her objection to Sherman’s view.
The cornerback found that objection unfounded.
“It’s hard to talk to someone who has no information. It’s difficult. It’s difficult. I wish this would be a better debate,” Sherman said, pantomiming give-and-take between him and her with his hands. “But it’s not. The levels aren’t there for us.”
He had one hand flat far above his other one.
The fans watching and hearing from the stands this one-sided argument on the arena’s big-screen video board roared and whistled.
That made Sherman’s response to another question even more telling.
“Name the most Stanford thing about me?” Sherman parroted back the question.
“My degree.”
At another podium, Michael Bennett continued his tour de force this month as a national breakout star.
Or have you already forgotten the cop’s bicycle the ultra-glib defensive end commandeered on the CenturyLink Field turf immediately after Seattle’s miraculous rally past Green Bay in the NFC title game two weeks ago?
There’s a levity to Bennett that was refreshing amid Tuesday’s chaos. He again wore the favorite cowboy hat of his great friend and long-time mentor Mark Alexander, who died two weeks ago back in his hometown of Houston from cancer. Bennett received the white hat from Alexander’s wife when Bennett flew home for the funeral last week. He’s been wearing it since, “for good luck,” he said.
Bennett had a, um, unique theory why the media and Lynch don’t get along.
“It’s like when you are dating a woman,” Bennett said. “You can’t be too aggressive when you are trying to get to ‘first base.’
“I think sometimes you guys are too aggressive, so you never get (there).”
Then: “Hey Mike, why doesn’t anyone like the Seahawks outside the Pacific Northwest?”
“People hate us because when you talk a lot of smack people usually hate you,” Bennett said.
“Talk a lot of smack and back it up, people hate you more.”
One of the keys to Sunday’s game is New England’s offensive linemen getting off the ball quickly enough to reach Bennett before he’s already in the Patriots’ backfield. Bennett has been a disruption to almost every team he’s faced this season by anticipating snap counts and using his quickness to ruin running plays and quarterbacks’ days both as a regular end and then tackle inside when Seattle goes to five defensive-back “nickel” packages on passing downs.
Why does Bennett think he is quicker than most offensive linemen?
Some of the linemen are overweight and I’m in shape,” he said. “I do Total Gym.”
But wait, isn’t he stressed at having to face six-time Super Bowl quarterback Brady, All-World tight end Rob Gronkowski and the Patriots’ offense on Sunday?
“I’m never stressed, man,” Bennett said. “I wake up every day and look in the mirror and say ‘Damn, I look good.’”
Some (apparently) Florida reporters wanted to talk about how the formerly undrafted Bennett — one of the whopping 22 undrafted Seahawks on the 53-man roster for this Super Bowl — spent his first four NFL seasons (2009-12) playing for mostly woeful Tampa Bay.
How thankful is he that he broke in for the Buccaneers?
“I’m thankful I’m not with the Bucs,” Bennett said.
Bennett didn’t mind the frenzy. He said he loved the fans and their hype and interest, how it drives and is in fact needed for the NFL’s multibillion-dollar annual machine.
“Playing in front of nobody would feel like playing in the CFL,” Bennett said of the Canadian Football League, “and that wouldn’t be fun.”
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