After Marshawn Lynch was ejected from last night’s game against the Chiefs for making contact with an official, there were reports that he had immediately changed into street clothes in the locker room and left the stadium. That turned out to not be quite true; Lynch did indeed leave the locker room and never returned to the Raiders’ sideline, but he stayed in the stadium.
Fans caught Lynch, with a hood on and his face covered, taking in the rest of the game from the stands:
When the game was over, Lynch returned to the locker room to congratulate his teammates on their thrilling victory. Then he took the BART train home:
We still don’t have a good explanation for what exactly Lynch was trying to do when he ran onto the field and ended up pushing an official. The obvious answer is that Lynch was trying to protect his quarterback, Derek Carr, but players in the locker room after the game speculated that he may have been looking out for Chiefs cornerback and good friend Marcus Peters. That’s the theory Raiders lineman Donald Penn floated to ESPN after the game:
“I saw Marshawn come out there; that’s his cousin. Chris Long did that thing to his brother a couple years ago. Marshawn wasn’t doing anything. He was just trying to protect his cousin, get his cousin to the sideline. They’re real close, they’re more like brothers than cousins, they’re real close. He’s going to learn. Marshawn’s smart, he’s going to learn from that moving forward.”
Whatever Lynch’s motivations were, he’s probably going to keep them to himself. He’s spoken to the media just a handful of times since returning to the NFL, and that’s not likely to change soon.