firehose

Warner Bros., Memegenerator.net

But like anything, it's not a slam dunk for everyone. If I were to switch from Verizon Wireless to T-Mobile, for example, I'd end up paying T-Mobile $150 more than I would pay Verizon over the next two years. Here's why.

Un-carrier marketing, real carrier restrictions

It comes down largely to the fact that, as we reported yesterday, T-Mobile's promise to pay off early termination fees is contingent on customers trading in their old phones and purchasing new ones from T-Mobile. While you can still bring your own phone to T-Mobile if it's unlocked and compatible with the network, if you do, T-Mobile won't pay off your ETF.I have an iPhone 5S with 64GB of storage that I bought for $400 which (sadly enough) is the subsidized price that required me to enter a new two-year contract with Verizon Wireless. I pay Verizon $75 a month (plus $6 in taxes and fees, but I'm setting that aside to make the comparison with T-Mobile an apples-to-apples one). That gets me 250 texts, 450 minutes, and 6GB of data. The amount I actually use is much less, so it's plenty. I barely talk on my cell phone, and I've only gone over 250 texts once in nearly 10 years (due to excessive texting caused by the Red Sox romping through the World Series).

On Jan. 8, 2011, Marshawn Lynch's 67-yard "Beast Quake" run propelled the 7-9 Seahawks to a stunning upset of the reigning Super Bowl champion Saints. Three years later, the Saints return to Seattle to once again face the Seahawks, this time as underdogs. Here is the story of the greatest run in NFL playoff history.

* * *

It was a broken play.

Marshawn Lynch took the handoff on second-and-10 and ran into a pile of bodies at the line. Watching from the stands behind the southern end zone of then-Qwest Field, I processed the fallout: the Seahawks, the woeful NFC West's lowly playoff representative, would face third-and-long, run a draw play to bleed more time off the clock, and punt. The Saints, reigning Super Bowl champions, would get the ball back with a timeout and the two-minute warning, and erase Seattle's unlikely four-point lead with a game-winning drive.

Except the play wasn't over. Lynch, somehow still on his feet, staggered out of a mass of bodies, a lateral displacement so quick it looked like a video game glitch. His legs churned, accelerating, cannonballing along the right hashmark. Would-be tacklers reached for him and slid to the turf. He hit the open field and we beckoned him toward our end zone with our voices, already hoarse from shouting for three hours. Tracy Porter put his arms on Lynch's shoulder pads, and Lynch swatted him away like a grizzly knocking a coho to a riverbed. Teammates and opponents hustled downfield, closer to us, closer to pandemonium. A final cutback and Lynch was diving into the end zone.

What happened in the stadium next is the sort of thing that NFL Films molds into the league's mythology, a battle-sport fought by giants and replayed in slow-motion to Wagnerian string music.

But I was there, and I'm telling you: the sky ripped open with noise. A roar beyond sound, a physical thing more industrial than human. The earth shook. It really happened.

This is how.

* * *

THE TEAM

The favoritism extended to the NFL's division winners in the playoffs comes under fire every year, but the complaints were never more justified than after the 2010 season. The 7-9 Seahawks hosted a home playoff game against the 11-5 Saints, who were relegated to the 5-seed and a Wild Card berth by the 13-3 Falcons, winners of the NFC South. The Giants and Buccaneers both finished 10-6 that year, and neither team made the playoffs. Three years have passed, and this is still unfair and always will be.

How bad were the Seahawks? Their net point total for the season was -97, third-worst in their own division (the 7-9 Rams and 6-10 49ers finished at -39 and -41). The team had a quarterback controversy between Matt Hasselbeck and Charlie Whitehurst. Their leading receiver was Mike Williams, the infamous draft bust reclaimed by Pete Carroll in his first year as the Seahawks coach.

According to Football Outsiders' advanced metrics, the only playoff team worse than the 2010 Seahawks was the Rams team of 2004, which made the playoffs as a Wild Card at 8-8 (and promptly defeated the Seahawks for a third time that season). The 2010 Seahawks remain the only NFL team to play a full season and make the playoffs with a losing record.

But the seeds of the NFL's best team during the 2013 regular season had taken root in 2010. Following a disastrous 2009 under Jim Mora, the Seahawks hired Carroll and paired him with new general manager John Schneider, architect of the Packers team that won Super Bowl XLV. In the 2010 draft, Schneider and Carroll used a pair of first-round picks to select left tackle Russell Okung and free safety Earl Thomas, both of whom would be impact rookies. Golden Tate, Walter Thurmond, and Kam Chancellor -- all significant contributors to the team today -- were also rookies in 2010.

But the team's biggest personnel move of 2010 happened a month into the season. The Seahawks gave up a fourth-round pick in 2011 and a fifth-rounder in 2012 to acquire Marshawn Lynch from the Bills. Lynch, drafted 12th overall in 2007, started his career with back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons that lost their luster after run-ins with the law. His driver's license was revoked in June 2008 for a hit-and-run incident, and in March 2009 he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor gun charge, which resulted in a three-game suspension to start the 2009 season. Later that year, Lynch lost the starting job to Fred Jackson. With the Bills' addition of C.J. Spiller in the 2010 draft, Lynch's exit was only a matter of time.

"I had known him growing up, coming through high school and all that," Carroll told ESPN, referring to his time as the coach of USC. "I knew who he was, the style that he ran with. I wanted to see if we could include that into the building of this program."

* * *

THE BEAST

Lynch grew up in Oakland, became a prep sensation for Oakland Tech, then committed to play at Cal -- a 10-minute drive up College Avenue -- where he became the school's all-time leading rusher. He is a folk hero in the East Bay, as memorable for his personality as his skill on the field. This was never more clear than in Cal's win against Washington in 2006, after the Huskies forced overtime with a Hail Mary that sucked the air out of Memorial Stadium. Lynch, playing with two sprained ankles, rushed 21 times for 150 yards and two touchdowns, including the game-winner. He celebrated with a joyride in a commandeered injury cart.

For someone accustomed to a small radius of sunshine and family, Buffalo, perhaps, was not the ideal city to begin his pro career. "I didn't know what to expect. I just knew I was going to New York," Lynch told ESPN's Jeffri Chadiha in a rare interview last year. "I thought I was going to be out there with Jay-Z, and then when I finally landed in Buffalo" -- his voice sank with disappointment -- "aw, man, it was like, slush on the ground. Just finished snowing." He shook his head, recalling the trauma. "I don't know nuthin' about no snow."

Nevertheless, Lynch endeared himself to the community. After Willis McGahee famously dismissed Buffalo's nightlife -- "Can't go out, can't do nothing. There's an Applebee's, a TGI Friday's, and they just got a Dave & Busters" -- Lynch teamed with ESPN's Kenny Mayne in a scripted segment that celebrated the city's chain restaurants. ("I love the ambience, I love the decor," Lynch deadpanned from an Applebee's booth.)

That eccentricity has continued in Seattle, most notably with Lynch's habit of snacking on Skittles between offensive series. And while his on-field potential has been realized -- three 1,200-yard seasons in his three full years in Seattle -- he also faces the possibility of another suspension from the league. Lynch was arrested for DUI in Oakland last summer, and his case will go to trial this offseason. These factors -- the arrests, the braids, his hometown -- make Lynch an easy target for the "thug" stereotype trotted out by columnists and talking heads.

ESPN's Chadiha asked Lynch about that perception last year. His response: "I would like to see them grow up in project housing, being racially profiled growing up, sometimes not having anything to eat, sometimes having to wear the same damn clothes to school for a whole week. And then all of a sudden a big-ass change in they life -- like, they dream come true, to the point where they starting their career at 20 years old, when they still don't know shit -- I would like to see some of the mistakes that they would make."

Perhaps that attitude -- an awareness of the divide between his life and those who talk about him -- is the impetus behind Lynch's media silence. The NFL fined Lynch $50,000 for not talking to reporters all season, a silence only recently broken when he granted reporters 83 seconds of his time after practice.

Seahawks fans responded by setting up a website to raise the money for his fine. The site's creator, Loren Summers, wrote "we don't need his interviews or his thoughts to appreciate the amazing talent he is, and the contribution he makes to our team." (For his part, Lynch has vowed to match the money raised and give it to charity.)

The underlying message: if Lynch would rather his play do the talking, Seahawk fans are more than happy to produce the noise. That much has been clear since his first playoff game.

* * *

THE PLAY

The run now known as the "Beast Quake" is a play called 17 Power. Essentially, everyone on the offensive line blocks down to the right, except for a pulling guard, who follows the fullback to the left, blocking linebackers and making space for the running back to follow through the frontside gap.

Or, as Lynch put it in an interview with NFL Films, "With Power, you runnin' straight downhill. You know where we comin', and we know where y'all gonna be lined up at. Now you just gotta stop me. I'm saying I'm better than you."

Facing second-and-10 and clinging to a four-point lead with 3:34 remaining against the Saints, the Seahawks are looking to bleed some clock and set up a manageable third down. They line up in an offset I-formation with Lynch and fullback Michael Robinson in the backfield. Tight end John Carlson is lined up outside left tackle Russell Okung, and wide receiver Ben Obomanu motions right to left, settling just outside Carlson. It's a run-heavy look, and the Saints respond by stacking eight men in the tackle box.

After the snap, things go pear-shaped quickly. The pulling guard, Mike Gibson, gets tangled up with Carlson as the two cross paths, leaving linebacker Scott Shanle unblocked as the ball carrier hits the hole. Shanle wraps Lynch up, but Lynch shrugs him off like a particularly heavy coat. (Danny Kelly, who regularly breaks down plays at Field Gulls, SB Nation's Seahawks blog, wrote to me: "Breaking a tackle in the open field is one thing, but running through a tackle like this when you're in a phone booth is a whole different feat.") Lynch slides to the right, where a hole in the line has opened up.

The hole is a result of defensive tackle Sedrick Ellis not containing the backside of the play. At the snap, Ellis -- lined up opposite Gibson and right tackle Sean Locklear -- keeps his eyes in the backfield and stunts over the top of the formation. He correctly guesses the hole that Lynch is going to hit -- only to find himself stacked behind Shanle, unable to make a play.

At this point, Gibson's early collision with Carlson becomes fortuitous: if Gibson had reached the hole to make a block on Shanle, Lynch likely would have found himself in the arms of Ellis. Instead, Shanle's tackle is broken, Ellis is out of position ... and Gibson rights himself and heads into the second level to lay a block on Tracy Porter, who will famously reappear in the play a few seconds later.

From there, it's all Beast Mode. Lynch breaks simultaneous arm tackles from Darren Sharper and Remi Ayodele. Jabari Greer launches himself at Lynch and slides off like a child flailing at his older brother. Porter hustles back into the picture to grab Lynch's shoulders, and Lynch responds with something that's less of a stiff-arm than a judo-like shove -- a cruel application of force that uses Porter's momentum against him and sends him turfward.

Lynch would later elaborate on the famous stiff-arm to NFL Films. "We almost was runnin' at top speed, so any kind of shove right there will throw a man off course. It's just a little baby stiff-arm." He smiles. "Yeah, a little baby stiff-arm."

Marshawn Lynch knows some mean-ass babies.

Lynch, slowed down by delivering the stiff-arm, is still 35 yards from the end zone, and his loss of momentum allows Saints and Seahawks alike to re-enter the play. On the telecast, Mike Mayock praises the hustle of Hasselbeck and Locklear to get downfield, but both narrowly avoid blocking defensive end Alex Brown in the back. Brown dives at Lynch at the sideline, but Lynch sees him coming and keeps his feet from getting tangled up.

At the 10-yard line, Lynch cuts back to the center of the field. Safety Roman Harper is the last Saint with a chance at Lynch, but left guard Tyler Polumbus -- a 305-pound man who has sprinted 65 yards downfield -- delivers a block that makes Harper's effort fruitless.

Lynch: "I'm just thinking, ‘What the hell just happened? Did this really just happen?'"

It really happened: at least seven New Orleans defenders got their hands on Lynch, and none could tackle him. Future TV replays will avoid the angle that shows it, but Lynch dives into the end zone while grabbing his crotch.

As he told Chadiha, "That was the stamp. The statement. With all that shit, you gotta finish it off somehow."

* * *

THE QUAKE

Lynch, standing in CenturyLink last summer, said, "If you wasn't in this stadium to see it and hear it, I feel you're being shortchanged by watching the video. It was that. Damn. Loud."

Although I was too hoarse to speak above a whisper for two days following the game, I was skeptical of the reports of seismic activity. It seemed overblown, an opportunity for the media to mythologize something that caused the slightest hiccup on hair-trigger instruments.

I called John Vidale, a professor at the University of Washington and the director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. With the clipped, informational speech patterns of an engineer, Vidale deflated each of my attempts to demystify the Beast Quake.

Is a seismic reading from a CenturyLink crowd common?

"I could find lots of noises from the stadium [throughout the 2010 season], but this one for Marshawn Lynch's run was twice as big as anything else all year from the football stadium. It was a very enthusiastic crowd."

Was this really an earthquake? Like, if someone had been walking by the stadium when it happened, would they have felt it in the ground?

"You'd probably feel the ground vibrate a little bit. I think you could have felt it in the ground if you're within a block or so."

But it wouldn't measure on the Richter scale, right?

"It would probably be the energy of a magnitude-one earthquake; even though the motion was kind of small, it lasted a long time."

Well, shit. That's an earthquake.

More Coverage from across SB Nation

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konami, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, platinum games, Steam.

Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie have just completed a successful year-long 15-issue run on Young Avengers. The widespread expectation was that their next collaboration would be “The Immaterial Girl,” the already announced third volume of their music-is-magic series Phonogram. It turns out they had a surprise up their sleeve.

Live on stage at Image Expo in San Francisco, publisher Eric Stephenson just announced a new ongoing Image series from Gillen and McKelvie titled The Wicked & The Divine. This is a story about gods, teenagers, life, death, and David Bowie. We spoke exclusively to Kieron Gillen to find out more.

ComicsAlliance: Hi Kieron. Congratulations on the new series! What’s The Wicked & The Divine about?

Kieron Gillen: Every 90 years or so, eleven gods incarnate in the bodies of the young. They are charismatic and brilliant. They stand before crowds, speak in tongues, and send them into rapture. They’re rumoured to perform secretive miracles. They save people’s lives, either metaphorically or literally.

They are loved. They are hated. They are brilliant.

Within two years, they’re dead.

That’s our cast. People with enormous gifts who only get to be on this Earth for a scant few years. The story joins with the majority of the gods returned to Earth – from Baal to Sekhmet, from Minerva to The Morrigan. Our lead, Laura, is a devotee. She loves them. She loves all of them. They make her feel alive like nothing else.

Laura wants more. She’s not happy with being a fan. She wants to be one of them, even if it comes with that cost.

And then she meets Lucifer.

Lucifer has a certain problem.

They help each other out.

Basically, it’s a superhero comic for anyone who loves Bowie as much as Batman.

CA: Tell me about the mythology. It sounds like you’re drawing on a mix of sources, from Christian to Celtic to Egyptian. How do you get to eleven?

KG: That’s been a good chunk of work – going through all the mythologies to see who fits the cast. At the same time, I was going through the pop-star archetypes, picking them. Sometimes I got a god I liked and worked out which pop-stars they would be like. Baal would be a good example of that. Sometimes I got a pop-star archetype and worked out what god suited them best. Having a character heavily informed by Prince and those who love Prince would be an example of that, which had me moving through about twelve gods before finally settling on one at once. Sometimes I got them both at once. Lucifer would be a good example of that. She’s very much cocaine-abuse megalomaniac ’70s Bowie.

When I started pulling together the cast, there was a time when I thought the whole cast would be women. I got to seven characters, and there was a bloke in there. I was thinking perhaps I’d end up doing that… at which point I got one that inspired me. It’s a 7/5 split, in terms of gender. In terms of the pantheons, the further I got into my research, I realized I was basically doing a god per pantheon, and should lean into that. In the end, certain areas have more representation – I’ve treated different periods of Greek religion as different pantheons.

However, It’s not actually eleven gods. It’s twelve. I didn’t mention Ananke, as she’s an exception, and key to the book’s mythology. Probably a little early to talk about her.

But it’s twelve, because twelve is one of those exciting magical numbers. There’s also practical elements – lots of room for heroes and villains, and internal drama. It’s not a team book. It’s a cast book, with Laura tying it all together.

CA: What was the inspiration behind the series?

KG: Hmm. Some of it is from the general flow of ideas and living. When I was dropping the “Teens aren’t rated Teen” line, I was starting to put together The Wicked & The Divine.

But the core?

I’m tempted to lie about the real answer, but probably better to say it now. I suspect given the oft autobiographical bent to my work, it would be fairly transparent. The Wicked & The Divine was one of the ideas I had in the days following my Dad being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

It’s a pop book, but it’s basically about life and death.

CA: It sounds like a very personal book, with Laura presumably the character that best replicates your experiences. In that context, what do the gods represent?

KG: It’s the standard writer line, but all the characters are me. It’s a book about wanting to be a creator, and being a creator, and everything in between. It’s a dialogue between all these experiences, and everything that happened along the way. So, yes, it’s autobiographical, but – as all my autobiographical stuff – it’s pretty heavily autocritical.

It also involves lots of punching and kiss, I should stress.

CA: The concept evokes old school Vertigo – most obviously Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, with its interactions between mythology and the mundane. Is it fair to say you’re trying to recapture some of that 90s Vertigo energy?

This is interesting. As it’s my first interview, I’m feeling out exactly how to explain the book. There’s certainly 90s Vertigo in the mix. The Wicked & The Divine extends from a lot of my thoughts over in Journey Into Mystery, and the Vertigo influence was never particularly hard to spot in that one. I’ll admit, I do have a sympathy for smart pop comic books, and Vertigo in the 90s were amazing at that, but this is pretty expressly an anti-nostalgia book.

We’re just trying to create our own mythology, a big pop universe to play with. I’ve been explicit with the gods above, but we’re playing with pop star archetypes as much as the god mythology. The question of whether the cast are actually gods or not is entirely open at the start of the book. Most people believe it’s just a hoax. Laura is a believer, but most people aren’t.

CA: Where does this series fit in to the ongoing evolution of the Gillen/McKelvie collaboration?

KG: We still haven’t found a way to escape each other, basically.

Onwards, really. We just want to do better and better work, and after Young Avengers, we’ve got a whole new bunch of things we want to try out. Building something from the ground up to show where our heads are in 2014 is part of it.

In some ways it’s Phonogram‘s sister book. Not a complete equal and opposite, as they’re stylistically miles apart, but Phonogram was a book about the consumption of art and culture while The Wicked & The Divine is a book that’s about the creation of art and culture.

CA: You quoted your Young Avengers line, “teens are not rated teen”, but there are limits to what one can do in a Marvel title. Do you plan to push things a little farther in this series?

KG: We plan to push things as far as is required. There’s no limits except those we choose to impose. Basically, it’s a state of the art modern fantasy universe, created in a bespoke fashion from its smallest parts for 2014. I mailed the first script to Jamie a few seconds after midnight. Jamie started work on January 1st. New, new, new.

It’s also a confident book. YA was a twitchy, neurotic, energetic little puppy. We’ve got a more measured step with this one. While I think anyone who’s ever liked what we’ve done is going to like it, it feels bigger than that. People refer to Jamie and me as lots of things. You know – Jamie “Young Avengers” McKelvie or Jamie “Phonogram” McKelvie and so on. By the end of the year, it’ll be Jamie “The Wicked & The Divine” McKelvie. I think it’s that kind of book. There is a degree of swagger to this enterprise. I really don’t know about the audience – except it feels the most pop thing I’ve ever put out there — but we’re expecting strong reactions.

CA: I feel obliged to ask; what does this new series mean for the third volume of Phonogram, which was expected to come out in late 2014?

KG: Still happening. Basically, after doing a book trying to encourage the new in Young Avengers, it felt off to go back to an idea that dates to 2002-2003, in a story set in 2009, with scripts primarily written in 2011-2012. Generally speaking, I feel frustrated with the culture lag on all my work. EvenThree, the most recent idea that’s currently coming out, dates from 2010 or so in terms of when I conceived it.

We wanted to do something new.

In terms of pure practicality, Jamie is doing the first The Wicked & The Divine arc, then moves right onto Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl. The second arc of The Wicked & The Divine will be done by some of our awesome comic friends, as it suits its structure and it’s the sort of formalist medium-loving thing we like to do. I can’t name names, not least as we haven’t nailed it down 100%.

When Phonogram is done, Jamie comes back for the third arc. The fourth arc? Something akin to the second arc, though possibly with a singular artist. Jamie back for the fifth arc, something different for the sixth and so on until we run out of story.

As well as allowing us to do Phonogram, it also gives Jamie a lot of leeway. We both wanted to do an ongoing, but we were both aware that meant Jamie basically being tied to my waist in perpetuity. He’s got other projects he wants to explore, and this sort of Jamie’s-a-creator-but-not-drawing-every-arc thing let’s him do that. We were thinking about what Jock did on The Losers, in terms of how it works.

Man! This got very technical and detail orientated. Yes, you can tell this is just as overthought out and conceptually conceived as everything else we do.

Takeaway message: No change on Phonogram 3 from our last statements. We said it’ll be coming out the back end of 2014, and that remains true.

The Wicked & The Divine launches summer 2014 from Image.