As Coby Bryant sped towards the end zone for an interception and touchdown to help the Seahawks win over Arizona, he paid tribute to Marshawn Lynch with a reverse dive into the end zone and a jump into the crowd to party with 12s.
Turns out that wasn’t the only thing that followed in Lynch’s footsteps.
With so much riding on that win over the Cardinals, the 68,649 fans in attendance were whipped into a frenzy and jumping up and down, setting off a small earthquake.
That’s right, the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network has a sensor across the street from Lumen Field, which recorded seismic activity right at 3:18 p.m. Sunday when Bryant’s play perhaps further changed the course of the season.
“The thing that jumped out to us is that you can clearly see the energy put into the ground by the 12s,” said Doug Gibbons from the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.
Gibbons wants to be clear that nobody at the game was ever in any danger from the shaking and that it certainly has happened before.
Obviously, Marshawn Lynch’s epic 2011 playoff run set off the famous “Beast Quake.” “Coby Quake,” as we’re playfully dubbing it, was about two-thirds the intensity of Marshawn’s original. Both were significantly less shaking than that of the Taylor Swift fans from her 2023 concerts at Lumen Field. The caveat with that, however, as Gibbons points out, is Swift’s show had sound systems with deep bass, being that it’s a music show.
The shaking caused by Marshawn and Coby’s plays? All generated by fans jumping and loving their Seahawks.
“I’m extremely excited and blessed,” Bryant told me after the game on KOMO News. “After all the things I’ve been through in life, I just give thanks to God and keep working."
Mike Macdonald wants to break the record one day for the shaking caused by his team, but he was still excited about Coby’s moment and the joy his team could give the 12s.
“Honestly, in the moment, I didn't realize how loud it was,” said Seahawks Head Coach Mike Macdonald. “And then I listened to the TV copy of it, and it was rocking. It was awesome. All of my family and friends were telling me how cool it was. The place erupted. Special moment, man. It's really cool
It is really cool, and it has happened multiple times now. Certainly, we all know about the active seismic region we live in here in the Pacific Northwest, but there’s a unique structure to the land by Lumen Field that makes it more susceptible to shaking from raucous fans.
“The ground there in SODO is sort of loose and relatively unconsolidated sediments,” Gibbons said, adding that the sensor they have in the area is so close to Lumen Field it can very easily pick up that activity. It’s one of roughly 700 sensors the PNSN has in the region. The shaking is the literal energy of folks in the stadium showing their excitement, providing unique reasons for those sensors to pick up activity.
I asked Gibbons about the “magnitude” of the shaking, and he said it’s tough to translate to the magnitude scale, but said the level of shaking for “Coby Quake” was probably close to a 1 on the scale. Whereas, “Beast Quake” would have been closer to 1.5.
But let that sink in. The passion of the 12s literally makes the ground shake. Your excitement for the Seahawks continues to make scientific anomalies---and make Lumen Field a tough place to play. No wonder Mike Macdonald told me he wants to break the record for shaking caused by fans.
