Marshawn Lynch Spending Time in Amish Country Is Best Thing You’ll See Today

Every week during Amazon’s Thursday Night Football coverage, former NFL tailback Marshawn Lynch gives viewers a look at life in the city where the game is being played with his ’N ’Yo City segment. But the vignettes are just as eye-opening for Lynch as they are for fans at home. He’s taken a boat through the bayou looking for alligators, gotten a tour of Mission Control at NASA headquarters in Houston and reminisced about a classic ESPN segment during a return to Buffalo, among other things. 

This week, with the game in Philadelphia, Lynch traveled outside his comfort zone again for a trip to Pennsylvania’s Amish country (the town of Intercourse, Pa., to be exact). The result was three minutes of delightful television. 

Lynch seemed flummoxed by several aspects of Amish life, such as the steep $15,000 price tag for a new horse-drawn buggy (“Fifteen bands for a buggy?”), the amount of milk a cow produces every day (“So it’s hella milk in them cows, then”) and the loopholes the Amish employ to use electricity (“Y’all Amish people think y’all slick”). It’s obviously a long way from where Lynch grew up in Oakland. 

But what makes the segment so enjoyable, and what makes Lynch perfect for the role, is the way he approaches the experience with equal amounts of curiosity and respect. At one point, he wanted to show his guests the video for the Weird Al Yankovic song “Amish Paradise,” but he made sure to ask if it was O.K. first. 

“I can show you a video and you’ll watch it?” he asked. “I don’t wanna get you in trouble.”

If Amazon is smart enough, Lynch’s pregame segments should open the door to a full-fledged travel series. He’s already shown he’s a natural.