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By Michael Silver | July 23, 2020

EDITOR'S NOTE: Some of the quotes in this story contain language that may be offensive. The language was preserved to present the speaker's message as the speaker intended.

"To be from one week sitting down, kicking back, drinking hella Hennessy, and then the next week to ... Beast Mode," Lynch marveled. "That s--- felt hella good."

His presence wasn't merely ceremonial. He got the first of his 12 carries on the game's second series, rumbling for 5 yards. Later, with 9:55 remaining in the game and the Seahawks at the 49ers' 1-yard line, Wilson handed the ball to Lynch, who leaped over the line and into the end zone, cutting the Niners' lead to 19-14 and sending the stadium into a state of delirium.

There were plenty of non-dry eyes in the house, including some on the Seattle sideline.

"It was such an extraordinary story," Carroll recalled. "Could it possibly be that he could be part of this thing? And sure enough, he scored the touchdown. I teared up. I was so fired up."

As fans and teammates celebrated wildly, Lynch, too, got emotional.

Damnnnnnn ... I'm hella old, and I just scored. What the f--- is going on?

Then things got even crazier. With 22 seconds to go and San Francisco now leading 26-21, the Seahawks, once again, were a yard away from the end zone. There were goosebumps everywhere -- from the luxury suite containing part of a cheering section (including California Gov. Gavin Newsom) that, in the estimation of Lynch's agent, Doug Hendrickson, amounted to "half of Oakland," to the back of Carroll's neck. This was the coach's chance to make an emphatic statement: Though he and Lynch can never claim that Lombardi Trophy they were so close to grasping in Super Bowl XLIX, the sight of the running back blasting in from a yard out in this context would have constituted a euphoric cleansing for all parties -- and, in Carroll's words, "a story for the ages."

Alas, it didn't happen. A delay-of-game penalty moved the ball back to the 5, Lynch jogged to the sideline, and the Seahawks were held inches short of a winning score.

Two weeks later, at Lambeau Field, Lynch had a pair of 1-yard touchdown runs against the Green Bay Packers, but Seattle fell 5 points short again, this time in a Divisional Round playoff game. Afterward, Lynch paid a visit to the home locker room to catch up with Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, his old Cal teammate, before giving a heartfelt speech to the Seahawks that several witnesses said gave them chills.

Finally, he took the podium for a postgame press conference, dispensing additional advice to young players throughout the league in his inimitable style ("Start taking care of y'all mentals, y'all bodies and y'all chicken") and quickly cashing in with T-shirt and hoodie sales bearing one of his newly coined slogans.

In other words: vintage Marshawn Lynch.

The fairy-tale ending that he and Carroll had both desperately craved never happened. Yet, looking back, the Return of Beast Mode was pretty damn satisfying -- surely, it was one of the more uplifting stories of the 2019 season. And it all began with a chance meeting at a Bellevue steakhouse in the heart of summer.

"It was time for him to move on," Schneider said. "The message had gotten old. There were a lot of people in his ear about how he'd gotten screwed in the Super Bowl (XLIX)."

Earlier this offseason, Carroll referred to the fallout from that Super Bowl XLIX defeat as a grieving process, later elaborating: "It was such an emotional way to lose for everybody, and we had to rebuild everybody's brain. We just bludgeoned our way through that. I tried to just make sure that I was unwavering. So, that was the challenge: To allow for the grieving and all of that, and then see what the issues were, and then put it back together. Yeah, that was hard. It was a hard challenge. It was really hard on some players. And some of us will never get over it."

Suffice it to say, that heartbreaking sequence was especially hard on Lynch. Yet long before his head coach's confounding decision not to hand him the ball at the 1-yard line and the absurd conspiracy theories that followed -- including speculation that Carroll was motivated by a desire to have Wilson, rather than the enigmatic running back, win Super Bowl MVP -- the strain between Lynch and his superiors had become conspicuous.

At one point during the 2014 season, on the eve of a road game at Washington, Lynch got on an elevator at the team hotel with two other passengers: Schneider and Schneider's wife, Traci. As the trio ascended, Lynch spoke cordially with Traci while declining to acknowledge John's existence.

Flash-forward to last August. On that night in Bellevue, the upscale business area east of Seattle, on the opposite end of Lake Washington, there was nothing but love.

"You look like you're still in shape," Schneider told Lynch. "Like you could play a little bit."

"Maaaaan," Lynch shot back, "you don't think I can play anymore. You think I'm washed up."

"No, I think you could still play. But, I mean, you'd never want to play for us again."

Lynch just laughed, not taking the conversation seriously.

Schneider told Lynch that, in theory, he'd be well-suited for a late-season role as a third-down/short-yardage back, given his ability to catch the ball, block and run in tight spaces.

"You never know how it goes. Maybe you could get yourself in shape and come in around Week 9."

"Nah," Lynch said, "maybe Week 13 or something."

Schneider knew Lynch wasn't being literal. As the running back recalled, "That was just busting jokes and s---."

Yet, as far back as the spring, Schneider had pondered the late-season-comeback scenario in conversations with Hendrickson, Lynch's agent. Lynch, who'd retired a second time after an injury-shortened 2018 season with the Raiders, had been working out with then-Rams (and current Ravens) cornerback Marcus Peters and well-traveled quarterback Josh Johnson, his close friends, cousins and fellow Oakland natives. After Lynch told Hendrickson how good he felt during those sessions, the agent brought up the idea of a Seattle return with Schneider, saying, "Listen, if Marshawn came back, he would want to play for you guys."

Recalled Hendrickson: "I don't think (Schneider) believed me. I think he thought, 'Come on, man, really?' The way things ended there, it was a difficult time for a lot of people."

Yet, for Schneider, any sense that there was lingering resentment on Lynch's part was put to rest on the night of Sept. 23, when he and Traci attended former Seahawks defense end Cliff Avril's charity event, Dining to Make a Difference, at the W hotel in Bellevue.

"Traci and I bumped into Marshawn right away," Schneider remembered. "And it was obvious at that point that whatever angst he had toward the organization, or Pete or myself, he had let it go. It was the first time we had really opened up to each other like that in several years.

"I said, 'You getting ready? You staying in shape?'… kinda messing with him a little bit. And he said, 'Shoot, I can be ready to go. You ain't serious, anyway.' "

Schneider was at least semi-serious: He had recently gone back and watched tape of each of Lynch's touches during the 2018 season, the running back's second with Oakland, and liked what he saw. Confident that Lynch could still play at a high level, Schneider assured the running back his interest was real.

"You never know," the GM told him. "You don't know how this is gonna go. We don't have a real great emergency list of running backs this year, and shoot, man, if you're ready to go, you can still run it."

They talked for a few more minutes before Lynch told Schneider, once again, "You're not serious."

"I am, man," Schneider insisted. "I think you should stay ready."

The issue was this: Because Lynch, who hadn't filed retirement papers, was technically an unrestricted free agent, his presence at the Seahawks' facility would have to be reported to the league as an official visit, which would potentially create a premature storyline Schneider and Carroll weren't ready to address. Schneider, of course, had no idea Lynch would be visiting; nor did Carroll, who was told during a meeting that Lynch was walking around the building and wondered what the heck was going on.

For that matter, Lynch's visit was news to Hendrickson, too.

Lynch, who traveled to Seattle semi-regularly to check in on the Beast Mode Apparel retail store near CenturyLink Field, had a legitimate reason to swing by the VMAC: His uncle, Lee Lynch, is a facilities assistant for the team. Still, the timing was curious. Schneider suggested that Marshawn and Uncle Lee meet him at Dino's, a burger joint and bar near the facility -- and he got no objection.

"My uncle's spot is Dino's," Lynch said, laughing. "He's at Dino's maybe seven times a week. I got word that I could get them put in harm's way if I were in the building, and all that technical s---, so my uncle just said, 'Come on, let's just go talk over there.' So we went over there, s---, and got loaded."

(The Seahawks nonetheless reported Lynch's visit to the league office, in compliance with the rules, a move later confirmed by an ����������official. The team also shared the news with local media members, depicting it as little more than a former player swinging by to greet some old friends.)

As they sat at a table near the dartboard, Schneider and Lynch, in the GM's words, "went through a whole litany of things. 'Do you really want to do this? Do you want to be around? Can you handle A, B and C? What are the rules of engagement? What are you doing? Where are you physically? Why do you want to do this?' He was amazing. We had a great conversation."

Recalled Lynch: "It was, how was I feeling? Is this really for real? Is this something I'd really be interested in and want? And, 'There is an opportunity for it to actually happen, so would you make this situation go if we had to pull the trigger?' And I said, 'If y'all really serious about it, then yeah.' So then they sort of put me on standby."

It was getting real -- and it was time to get the head coach involved.

When Schneider got back to the facility, Carroll immediately asked him, "Why did you meet with him outside the building?"

"I didn't want anybody seeing us meeting here," Schneider answered.

The GM had kept Carroll loosely informed about his previous interactions with Lynch, but now, in the wake of Penny's injury, the conversation turned more substantive.

"Is he legitimate?" Schneider remembers Carroll asking. "Is he not legitimate? Does he really want to do it?"

"Yeah," Schneider answered, "he's saying he really wants to do it."

Carroll's next question? "How'd he look?"

"Good!" Schneider answered.

Recalled the coach: "It seemed a little bit inappropriate that all of a sudden he showed up in the building, not because of anything other than it might stir other people up. John and I had kind of come to expect the unexpected, you know? Yeah, I was surprised. But it did mean that he was serious, that he was serious about doing something. That set the stage, really. He had a really good thought in mind and a good strategy of how he was trying to get what he wanted. He figured that out."

Carroll wasn't yet sold. The scars from that Super Bowl XLIX defeat to the Patriots still stung, and even before that, his relationship with Lynch had deteriorated. In a Nov. 2014 game at Kansas City, Lynch remained on a sideline bench for the entirety of the 12-minute halftime period while the rest of the Seahawks filed into the locker room. After that 24-20 defeat to the Chiefs, in a phone interview conducted on the team bus, he voiced his frustrations to NFL.com about his uncertain future with the organization.

"He was laying on the bench in Kansas City at halftime," Carroll remembered. "It was freezing butt, now. Cold as you can get. And he stays out during halftime because (he later explained) his back was sore. It made no frickin sense at all. He was freezing his ass off and he stayed on the bench, which made no sense. (But) he needs to be the individual that he is."

While Carroll pondered the pros and cons of bringing back an estranged star, Lynch got serious about a comeback. After his unannounced visit to the VMAC and the subsequent conversation with Schneider at Dino's, Lynch flew back to the Bay Area and began ramping up his workouts under the supervision of longtime trainer Tareq Azim.

The following Sunday, Carson ran for 133 yards in the Seahawks' 30-24 road victory over the Carolina Panthers. Lynch remained in limbo.

Two days later, Schneider told Hendrickson, "Listen, as much as we love him and want him, we're not gonna do anything."

The agent took a few deep breaths before phoning Lynch to pass along the news.

"It was a hard phone call to make," Hendrickson said. "I said, 'Look, bro, it's not gonna happen. They feel good about their (running back) situation, and a lot of things would have to happen for this to go down.'"

Lynch said he understood -- and booked a flight out of the country, heading up to Toronto to visit some friends. He had moved on, physically and psychically.

Then, on Sunday, as Lynch was obliviously enjoying himself north of the border, s--- happened on the other side of the continent.

Once upstairs, Schneider finally heard back from Hendrickson, who texted, "Call me after the game."

The agent was home by then, having cut short the bike ride, but he still hadn't been able to get ahold of Lynch. More time passed. The Seahawks lost, 27-13, and Schneider and Carroll waited for an answer. By then, they had put aside their fears about Lynch's conditioning and the possibility that old baggage would resurface and fully embraced the idea.

In this case, necessity was the mother of reconciliation.

"To me, we turned the corner on it when we just realized that this could be really special," Carroll said. "At that point, it was kinda like, 'What the heck? Let's go for it.' "

Three hours after learning of the injuries to Carson and Prosise, Hendrickson finally got Lynch on the phone.

"By then, the whole world knew what had gone down," Hendrickson said. "He had no clue. I told him and said, 'You gotta be there tomorrow.' He got a late-night workout in and booked a flight for Monday morning."

Lynch missed the flight. When he rebooked, his seating options for the long, transcontinental journey were not optimal. Hendrickson remembered that the muscular running back sat in 35E; Lynch had a slightly different recollection. "Nah, hell no -- I wouldn't get in no middle seat," he said, laughing. "I did have a f----- up seat (in coach, toward the back), though."

By the time Lynch cleared customs and rolled up to the VMAC for the second time in 13 days, it was 4:30 p.m. Now, the only obstacle standing between him and a triumphant return to the Seahawks was a conversation with the head coach.

"You know, Pete has his ways," Lynch said. "But I've worked with Pete enough to know what's what. I knew what I was coming in for, so there really wasn't too much to be spoken on."

Still, after entering Carroll's office, Lynch did his best to assure the coach he was coming back for the right reasons -- to help the team in a time of need and do anything he could to uplift the franchise. And it played out like the famous scene at the end of Jerry Maguire: Carroll, essentially, told Lynch, "You had me at 'Hello.' "

"It was a very memorable conversation," Carroll recalled. "Really, the first 30 seconds, I could feel him and what he was conveying, and I said I was good. I knew his heart was open to the opportunity. He wanted to do it for all the right reasons. As he went on and on and on to try to convince me, I said, 'Look -- I already know. I got you. I've just been waiting for you to come back. I never thought that you couldn't, but I just didn't know if you would.'

"So, as he was talking, I was kinda laughing. It was funny to me that he cared enough to try really hard to make that point that he was gonna come do everything for the right reasons. I said a couple of things: 'I expect you to do everything and be involved with all of it.' And then I said, 'I've got no problems; you're in.'

"It really felt like my heart was open, like it is to all of our guys. Once our guys go for it with us and give us everything they've got, they're on my good side forever. I don't care what they say or what they do -- they had given their service and they had worked with us and they had won my heart over, and it didn't matter what they did or what they said from that point forward. As soon as I heard Marshawn start to really just open his heart to it, then I said, 'OK -- the guys are waiting for you. Let's go.' "

And off he went. Lynch's arrival gave the organization an emotional jolt at a tenuous time. The Seahawks were in the midst of an injury wave that extended far beyond the running back room; star left tackle Duane Brown, key defensive backs Quandre Diggs and Shaquill Griffin and standout defensive end Jadeveon Clowney were also dealing with health issues.

"It wasn't just the running back position," Schneider said. "We had contact injuries, non-soft-tissue injuries at the end of the season. And he came in and he gave us a boost, man. He gave us some hope."

Lynch also had an innate understanding of his own aura. Though he had a comfort level in the building and saw a lot of familiar faces, the roster had undergone a significant revamping since his departure. Only five Seahawks had been Lynch's teammates during his previous stint in Seattle: Wilson, linebackers Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright, wide receiver Tyler Lockett and tight end Luke Willson. (Offensive lineman Justin Britt, another holdover from that era, was on injured reserve by the time Lynch rejoined.)

Said Carroll: "A lot of guys grew up watching him, and they didn't know him. I don't know if they were scared or intimidated, but they certainly didn't know how to deal with him. He knew that, and so he made it easy for them. He made it easy for everybody. He nailed it. He's an extraordinarily instinctive person and a savvy guy about a lot of things, and he picked right up on what was necessary and pulled it off."

In Lynch's words: "I mean, I ain't never had no problem with being able to wiggle my way into any situation. You woulda thought that I had been there the whole year, and been f----- with them my whole life, like I had always done with any of my teammates."

Lynch, who had once been openly disdainful toward Pearson's efforts to get him to comply with his media obligations -- and irate over the subsequent ����������fines that followed when he bucked them -- made a point of telling the PR chief upon his return, "You won't have any problem with me."

Said Schneider: "He was awesome to everybody in the building. He was really cool to the equipment guys, the trainers, the chefs, the people that he didn't really know yet. It lifted the organization. He just brings a certain juice about him. The fact that we went through everything we did with him, with the Super Bowl and all that, it was pretty awesome that everybody was kinda just letting bygones be bygones, and it's about trying to win football games and his legacy."

On Dec. 24, the day after he officially rejoined the Seahawks, Lynch hit the practice field, got in touch with his inner O.G. and, in his words, got plugged back in and reentered The Matrix. When practice was over, and the oohing and aahing had subsided, Lynch began walking off the field, saw Pearson and stopped.

"You don't know how much I appreciate this place," Lynch said, smiling.

"The thing is," Schottenheimer said, "nobody will ever know."

Well, we pretty much know.

"They spike the ball," Hendrickson recalled. "I go, 'Oh my God. They're gonna hand him the ball. This guy's gonna run it in. The entire stadium is gonna carry him off the field and into downtown Seattle.' "

Said Carroll: "Had that come true, it would have been a story for the ages -- for us, anyway. I don't know if anybody else would have cared, but it would've been an all-timer."

Alas, confusion reigned. In an effort to sub out of their "01" package (four receivers, one tight end, no backs) and into an alignment featuring Lynch, there were communications issues, exacerbated by the fact that Lynch -- whose football aptitude is legendary -- may have been unfamiliar with some of the new terminology. The play clock ran down, and the Seahawks, out of timeouts, were called for delay of game.

Now it was second-and-goal from the 5, which took Lynch off the field.

Two incompletions later (one of which seemingly should have triggered a booth review for potential defensive pass interference in the end zone), it was fourth-and-goal. Wilson zipped a pass across the middle to tight end Jacob Hollister, who was stopped just short of the goal line -- a subsequent replay review showed that he was inches shy of breaking the plane while being tackled by linebackers Dre Greenlaw and Fred Warner.

"Two inches from being everything," Carroll said. "I was really, really disappointed that we weren't able to capitalize on that. And I was hoping that whole (Lynch) storyline would give us a boost going into the playoffs, where we might be a team that other teams can't figure out. It was a really cool moment, though -- that whole finish to the season. One big moment. It was really fun."

By the time Lynch got back to the Seahawks' locker room, Carroll was getting ready to address the team and feeling melancholy.

"I just regretted the fact that we didn't pull it all off," the coach recalled, "because it was such a storybook opportunity for this guy, our program, for our season, for our players and all that."

Carroll spoke, and then Wilson followed with a short speech. A quick prayer would follow. This was it.

"Hey coach," Lynch said. "I've got something to say."

And then Lynch, in Schottenheimer's words, gave a speech that was "incredibly powerful. His message was something I will remember for the rest of my life. I get chills thinking about it.

"He just wanted to share with everybody what a special place this is, and what a great organization the Seahawks have. He said it in the style only he can, but the message was this: When you go other places and have a chance to see what that's like, and then have a chance to come back, you really understand what a special place this is. And also, how proud he was to be part of this team, the way the young guys compete and played, that he was proud to be in this locker room, and that he's got everybody's back.'"

Lynch's message also included a fitting prelude to his uproarious "Take care of y'all chicken" podium appearance that followed, as he tried to impart the wisdom of his experiences -- good and bad -- to his younger teammates.

Most of all, he exhorted the 2019 Seahawks not to live in the past.

"It was just about us making history in that locker room, and now you've got a new team in that mother------, and they're trying to do the same," Lynch said. "Just telling them, mainly, 'S---, don't get held up on trying to recreate what we had. Go find what it is that y'all have. Y'all go create your own s---.'

"Because, you know, I've seen a lot of mother------- trying to compare them to us, and I don't feel that's fair. At the end of the day, I believe that when I got there and I saw it for myself, like, you know what? Y'all got something. I believe that y'all can create your own s--- and not recreate something that was. Because at the end of the day, there is no Brandon Browner on that team, there is no Byron Maxwell, no Red Bryant, no Brandon Mebane.

"But what y'all do have is y'all have y'all. So y'all gotta remember that y'all mother------- are special, and that y'all can do this s--- just as well as anybody else."

"Talk to any young player -- that guy brought some really cool juice, and that talk he (gave after the Packers game) impacted them and will impact them as far as how they see the game, their brand and the world of football."

To Schneider, Lynch's mindset reflected a perspective the player hadn't necessarily possessed during his previous six-season stint with the Seahawks.

"Not to get too personal with the conversations," Schneider said, 'but I think having been out of football, having gone to a different place, having his own businesses, running his own restaurant, he was like, 'I understand a lot more where you guys were coming from at the time.' I don't want to say it was a maturity thing, but it seemed like it.

"Time heals all wounds. It'll probably take Earl (Thomas, the perennial All-Pro safety who signed with the Ravens after the 2018 season after ending his time in Seattle on bad terms) a bit longer. But at some point, those guys are going to be up in the Ring of Honor."

In the meantime, Lynch wants to stay connected to his Seahawks experience in one important way: honoring the late owner's legacy.

"I know (Paul Allen) did a lot of work giving back and s---," Lynch said, "and I reached out to his team and told them that if they had anything going as far as giving back that I could be a part of to just reach out to me, to keep his name alive in that aspect. That's something that I do on a daily basis, so I wouldn't mind getting behind some of the s--- he had going on, even if it's just to go to an event or something. We'll see how that s--- goes."

It's a touching sentiment -- a reminder that nothing lasts forever, but memories endure. From 2010 to '15, the Seahawks experienced some incredible highs, a wrenching, collective gut punch of epic proportions and a whole lot of exuberance and attachment and strife and regret along the way. There was confetti and conflict and, years later, seemingly out of nowhere, a sense of closure that all parties concerned will forever cherish.

"It was just an extraordinary experience of a guy showing who he is and what he's all about and what he stands for," Carroll said. "Marshawn gave his whole heart to the opportunity. Not always can we show our best side when we're under siege, but he is such a powerful individual. That was just a great finish."

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