When you think of Marshawn Lynch, you should forever think about him going Beast Mode. The future Pro Football Hall of Famer went Beast Mode on one of the greatest runs in NFL history. The 2010 Seattle Seahawks, a sub-.500 team at the time, stunned the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints in the NFC Wild Card run on something that has become known as ... Beast Quake.
The play helped define Lynch's career, and he quickly became synonymous with the phrase the play in question inspired. Now firmly in retirement and living his best life possible, Lynch should be feeling hashtag blessed that Beast Mode is officially listed in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. It is one of 690 new words that have been proudly added to our vocabularies, our vernaculars, our lexicons, if you will.
So when you look up Beast Mode in a Merriam-Webster, this is what is says next to a picture of Lynch.
Beast Mode (noun, slang ): an extremely aggressive or energetic style or manner that someone (such as an athlete) adopts temporarily (as to overpower an opponent in a fight or competition)
I have never wanted to run 17 Power through a brick wall wrapped with barbed wire more in my life!
Marshawn Lynch officially has a home in a Merriam-Webster dictionary
For a distinguished lifelong champion from Cal, this feels most appropriate. Lynch is both a gentleman and a scholar, as well as one of the most interesting players I have ever covered in my professional writing career. To date, he remains my favorite interview. Him telling me how hot Drew Brees got after the Beast Quake one had me in stitches because I will never like the Saints, dawg.
Overall, Beast Mode was well on its way towards becoming a phrase worthy of Merriam-Webster's attention. However, it needed a catalyst, a face, if you will, to help bring it off Urban Dictionary and into the mainstream. Lynch was undeniably that. The perennial Pro Bowler for the Seahawks, Buffalo Bills and Oakland Raiders was a perennial Pro Bowler, a 10,000-yard rusher and a Super Bowl champion.
Ultimately, we can only hope for more moments like Beast Quake was for us some 13 years ago to cut through and provide us with words and phrases that Merriam-Webster will officially recognize. I may have grown up watching Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith duke it out for NFC supremacy in the 1990s, but Beast Quake was the greatest run of my life. It was a total game-changer for everyone.
The only way to celebrate this momentous occasion is to pound an entire sleeve of Skittles, baby!
