“A-Rod Was Special,” Shannon Sharpe Dives Into Memories as Seahawks’ Icon ‘Beast Mode’ Recounts Aaron Rodgers’ Big Gesture

Aaron Rodgers and Marshawn Lynch! They make for strange bedfellows. The former, a quarterback, played for the Green Bay Packers for most of his career. Now retired, the latter, a running back, spent most of his professional career with the Seattle Seahawks. Recently, Marshawn Lynch took a trip down memory lane with Shannon Sharpe on the Club Shay Shay podcast. They played together at the University of California. At the time, Lynch was a freshman and Rodgers was a junior entering his second season as a starter.

Lynch has only fond memories of his time with A-Rod. He named Aaron Rodgers as the reason he got his “opportunity at Cal.” It was the Golden Bears’ spring game and head coach Jeff Tedford made the bold call to “put 2-4 in.” He then called the play, “24-Power.” Lynch was admittedly intimidated by the people on the other side, “grown-ups” as he called them. Then came an epoch-making moment in his career.

Aaron Rodgers handed off the ball backward!

After the snap, Lynch went the wrong way. But he soon discovered that “A-Rod was special.” Aaron Rodgers looked around for Lynch and found him “on the other side.” Then came a quick adjustment followed by improvisation. As Lynch put it, “A-Rod pulled the smoothest move I’d ever seen. That boy turned and handed the ball off to me backwards. He was facing the other way and handed the ball off to me backwards.”

Though Lynch scored from that play, he found himself on the receiving end of an expletive-laden tirade from the running back coach. As Tedford walked over to add to that, Aaron Rodgers took the blame for the whole thing. The running back coach insisted Lynch made the error but A-Rod insisted it was he who committed the mistake. Lynch had “never seen a quarterback do that.”

The best QB Lynch ever played with

Aaron Rodgers then asked the coach for the next play he had to run. In Marshawn Lynch’s words, “The rest was history after that.” There was “a level of trust” established between the pair from that point on. Aaron Rodgers defended the running back after he got himself into a jam. As Lynch put it, Rodgers was the one who put him “in the mix.”

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Aaron Rodgers has one Super Bowl ring to his name after winning Super Bowl XLV with the Packers. That was A-Rod’s only Super Bowl appearance up to this point. According to Marshawn Lynch, he probably should have more. That is because Lynch considers him one of the best quarterbacks in the sport. He stated categorically that Rodgers was “the best quarterback” he ever played with.

Marshawn Lynch scored on the first play of his college football career. If not for Aaron Rodgers, that had the potential to be his last play for a while. Rodgers took the blame for his mistake, after improvising to ensure the play in question proved a successful one. That was a pivotal moment in Lynch’s career. If not for A-Rod, he might not have been the player he became.

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