Marshawn Lynch Spectacular Seismic Touchdown, Literally

The scene is late in the wildcard round of the playoffs, the underdog Seahawks led 34-30 at home. Yes, that’s right. The favorites, and defending Super Bowl champion Saints, were the road team. How did this happen? The Saints secured a wild card spot behind the Atlanta Falcons and the Seattle Seahawks won their division….with a losing record! The Saints trailed by four points and needed to regain possession of the ball. With 3:34 on the clock Matt Hasselbeck took the snap and handed the ball off to Marshawn Lynch. The play was a simple one, until Lynch emerged from a mass of bodies, that is. Lynch then skipped away from a tackle, delivered a nasty stiff-arm to another, and raced down the sidelines flanked by blockers into the endzone. According to Mike Sando of ESPN.com, when Director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network John Vidale saw a video of the run from the upper deck he noticed shaking. He was compelled to check the seismic graphs recorded about 100 yards from the stadium. Upon observation, he noticed that the run and subsequent cheering from the some 72,000 home fans recorded seismic activity on the charts.

This is not the first time that seismic activity was recorded because of a football game. On October 8, 1988 during a matchup between SEC rivals LSU and Auburn, The “Bayou Bengals” scored within the final two minutes in Baton Rouge to take a 7-6 lead on a fourth down pass. The reaction of the crowd of 79,431 fans was recorded some 300+ yards away in LSU’s Geoscience Complex.