How Marshawn Lynch helped teammate after career-ending injury
On a truly terrible day in Ricardo Lockette’s life, when he suffered what was ultimately a career-ending neck injury, one of his Seattle Seahawks teammates stayed with him all night in the hospital.
It was Marshawn Lynch.
Lockette’s story in The Players’ Tribune is haunting, inspiring and incredibly insightful on the fleeting and dangerous life of a pro football player. Lockette talked about worrying he might be dead as he was on the turf at Cowboys Stadium, after taking a hard hit covering a punt. He wrote about the emotion of seeing his daughter in the hospital, the decision to retire and what’s important to him now. There’s also a great story about an encounter with a homeless man. The full story is well worth your time.
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Lockette also spent a few graphs in the story talking about Lynch. Lynch has cultivated a mystery over what he’s really like because he rarely opened up when he was a star running back with the Seahawks. Lockette wrote about the impact Lynch has had on others, especially in Lynch’s hometown of Oakland. Lockette said people don’t know the real Lynch, and Lockette’s goal in life “is to have 10 percent of the effect that Marshawn has on people’s lives.”
And Lockette talks about being in a Dallas-area hospital the night he was injured against the Cowboys, in a neck brace and unable to move. One can imagine how tough a night alone with your thoughts would be at a time like that, but Lynch made sure Lockette wasn’t alone.
“When I was taken to the hospital in Dallas, Marshawn stayed in my room with me the whole first night,” Lockette wrote. “This dude had me laughing so hard that he was putting my damn life in danger. I’m laying in bed with a full neck brace, just trying to stay still, and he’s just being Marshawn — talking to the nurses, making jokes, being crazy.”
Lockette also told a story about Lynch texting him out of the blue this offseason to apologize for running the wrong way off his block because apparently Lynch is still studying game film in retirement.
Lockette has quite a story to tell. So does Lynch, after all.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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