Why Marshawn Lynch joined former teammate Richard Sherman on TNF

Amazon Prime Video is now adding former Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch to their Thursday Night Football pre-game programming.

Thursday Night Football kicks off every week of the NFL season, and this year, it is exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. The streaming service added Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit as their commentary team, while their analysis desk consists of Charissa Thompson and former NFL players Tony Gonzalez, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Andrew Whitworth and Richard Sherman. As it turns out, the former Seattle Seahawks cornerback will have one of his teammates joining him.

Amazon vice president of Global Sports Video Marie Donaghue announced during an appearance on the “Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast,” that former Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch is joining Thursday Night Football’s pregame show. Donaghue said that Lynch’s DUI arrest in August was not the reason for the delay in bringing him onto the Thursday Night Football team.

“I think Marshawn wanted to work through some things,” Donoghue said, h/t Andrew Marchand of the New York Post. “We were already working with him. We never walked away. We just worked through some things with him and we’re excited. We can’t wait for him to join.”

Marshawn Lynch says he joined Thursday Night Football because he got ‘bored’

Lynch also appeared on “The Richard Sherman Podcast” where he told his former Seahawks teammate the reason why he joined Thursday Night Football is “realistically, I got bored.” His segments for Thursday Night Football will be “N Yo’ City.”

You can listen to Lynch’s full appearance on “The Richard Sherman Podcast” below:

“I told them, ‘I like moving around a little bit, is there a way we could do something to put me in the mix,’” said Lynch. “They said ‘what are you thinking?’ I’m like, man, with the cities that you’re going to these Thursday nights, I like them, I’ve been there before, is there some type of way where we can make something happen? They say ‘yeah, what are you thinking?’

“I say let’s put something together where you put something out there where I’m in your city. What I do is I pull up to the city and I see what the city has to offer.”

Lynch’s debut will be this Thursday for the Chicago Bears vs. Washington Commanders game. The very first feature will have Lynch at Highland Park, a Chicago, Ill. suburb that was in the news for a mass shooting this past July 4 that killed seven people.

In his NFL career that spanned from 2007-2019, Lynch accumulated 10,413 rushing yards and 85 rushing touchdowns on 2,453 carries. He was named to the Pro Bowl five times, and was part of the 2013 Seahawks team that won Super Bowl 48.

There will now be two former Seahawks on the Thursday Night Football team with the addition of Lynch.