Seahawk foes running not to end zone, but from police

by: Mike Parker

Cardinals RB JJ Arrington was arrested at 1:30 a.m. this morning after a fight broke out in a North Carolina nightclub. He was later charged with disorderly conduct and held later in jail for 24 hours for contempt of court. Story here.

Now, I know Arrington isn't quite the Cards' marquee guy or anything, but I still have to wonder what the hell's going on with some of the teams on the Seahawks' schedule this year - namely the running backs. What drives people like Marshawn Lynch, a guy with everything ahead of him in his career, to allegedly bar-hop all night and nail somebody in traffic at 3 a.m. and then vanish off the face of the earth when the cops suddenly want to know why his car is missing a headlight and half the front bumper?!

Not that any of this makes him look guilty or anything. Naaah.

And now Arrington, a relatively unknown name outside of Phoenix, gets into a five-person brawl at a nightclub somewhere in North Carolina and apparently pisses off the judge enough to get his ass locked up for a day.

Lynch's situation has of course lent itself to Seattle fans anxiously discussing the possibility of walking out of Buffalo with an easy Week 1 victory. Arrington being punished doesn't affect the Cardinals' lineup nearly as much, but it still happened.

And then there's one of our favorite offseason assclowns, Cedric Benson. Even though the Bears aren't on the schedule this year, it's fair to say that Chicago has been something of a rival to Seattle over the past couple of years. You could see the "holy-crap-we-might-actually-lose-this-one" fear in Brian Urlacher's eyes during the playoff game at Soldier Field two seasons ago that was decided in overtime on a field goal. But that's another story. The point is, Cedric Benson is now spending his offseason collecting unemployment, because the Bears decided to cut him loose after he was charged with boating AND driving under the influence in the same month. (Not at the same time, don't worry.)

In all this, I've come to the conclusion that Seattle's running back foes - past, present and future - are all being driven to acts of pure stupidity when they think about going up against the Seahawk defense. Visions of Patrick Kerney and Lawrence Jackson coming after them with the fury of a rabid wolverine high on PCP are simply too much for them to bear, so they end up crashing into things in the dead of night or randomly punching somebody in a bar for no particular reason. They're all behaving like Tony Montana at the end of "Scarface" - cornered, frothing-mad angry and mildly insane. Minus all the guns and drugs. Well, okay, guns.

And then there's Javon Walker, who deserves an honorable mention here, even though he's not a back. And it's only appropriate now that he's a member of the Oakland Raiders.
The circumstances of his recent mugging in Vegas have curiously not been released yet. I know, I know, police investigation, no details available yet, but still. Makes me wonder.

So now that Week 1 is a potential steal, I'm now waiting for Stephen Jackson to be found passed out on the streets of St. Louis with his dreadlocks stuck in the door of an Escalade, and Frank Gore to be charged in a mysterious incident involving a life-size effigy of Alex Smith with the word "DIE!!" smeared across it in blood.

Besides a 3-game win streak to start the season, think of the fun headlines we'd see after that....