John Lynch: A Tampa Treasure

TAMPA - We'll think of him whenever a football player hits another player so hard our teeth rattle, whenever commitment wins out, or when we see someone do something nice for someone else.

That was John Terrence Lynch.

After 15 seasons, after nine Pro Bowls, after ringing more bells than the Salvation Army at Christmas, Lynch officially quit the game he loves. He couldn't think of a better place to do it than Tampa Bay. We couldn't, either.

Granted, the stage, the new all-world opulent One Buc Place, seemed out of place, for the One Buc that Johnny Lynch knew was a rat trap. So was the franchise he joined in 1993. He changed that. He was one of the first. He swooped in from safety with no regard for his own safety. He asserted. He avenged. He helped forge a champion.

He belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, as should the men with whom he's forever linked, Derrick Brooks and Warren Sapp. John Lynch was a football treasure. A community one, too.

What the Bucs did to him after the 2003 season was wrong. He should have been a Buc for life. Instead, Lynch made the Pro Bowl each of the four seasons he was a Denver Bronco.

Bucs coach Jon Gruden popped in for Lynch's announcement, and was briefly praised. Bucs GM Bruce Allen also was present, but was never mentioned by Lynch.

Lynch and his wife, Linda, and their four supernaturally beautiful children live in Denver. But he made his way back to Tampa for this. "It's been in my heart for a while," he said.

It was always about his heart. He gave the Bucs 11 seasons, gave them his body and soul - and that scar on the back of his neck.

Lynch was always two men. There was the soft-spoken guy who you talked to during the week, the humanitarian, the big softy who cried whenever he saw soldiers in wheelchairs or heard "God Bless America."

Then there were Sundays. Big Softy, Opie from Mayberry, would knock your head off.

The great Barry Sanders made Lynch look silly a few times. But one time, Lynch drilled Sanders. A few months later, at a Pro Bowl, Sanders, forever quiet, spoke to Lynch.

"That was the hardest I've ever been hit," Sanders told Lynch. "I just wanted you to know that."

Sanders later wrote Lynch and invited him to a party celebrating his Hall of Fame induction. The two men hardly knew each other. Lynch showed.

"I always respected the way you played," Sanders wrote.

And so it is with all of us.

John Lynch is only 37. He'll do some football on TV and take time for his family.

He also retired as a Bronco on Monday. He didn't retire a New England Patriot, but did get one last gift from that team. Lynch was only a Patriot for a few weeks this preseason. He knew he wouldn't make the club, so he asked New England coach Bill Belichick one last favor, to play the final preseason game against the Giants, the whole thing.

So there was Johnny Lynch, out there with rookies and free agents, with no names, out there until the end in a near empty stadium. He had the time of his life.

"I got a couple of pretty good licks in," Lynch said.

John Terrence Lynch.

You try to forget him.