Marshawn Lynch injury: Beast Mode heads to Philly to see sports hernia specialist, surgery not ruled out

This will be a key week for Marshawn Lynch, who heads to Philly to see a sports hernia specialist about his abdomen injury.

As Ian Rapoport reported on Monday morning, "the belief is Lynch's abdomen injury is a sports hernia. Lynch will meet with noted specialist Dr. William Meyers in Philadelphia today. If Meyers confirms the fear, surgery would come quickly and Beast Mode could be out the rest of the regular season, per a source informed of the injury."

That implies that the Seahawks would hold on to Lynch on the active roster until the Playoffs with an eye on a healthy BeastMode once the wildcard round heats up. As Dr. Jene Bramel put it on twitter last night, "recovery from core abdominal surgery is usually in 4-to-6 week range. 6 weeks [would put him out to] Week 17. Surgery now may be best chance of healthy Lynch for playoffs."

So, we wait. Official word will probably come on Wednesday, but for me, this feels like surgery is most likely going to happen. It could be Thomas Rawls time for the rest of the regular season.

Pete Carroll addressed the situation after last night's game.

"We're going to try to take care of him, he's going to make a trip to go see (a specialist) out in Philadelphia to see if we can figure out what's going on. It's an abdominal issue, there's a lot going on there, so we've got to see what that all means."

If Lynch is on the sidelines for the remainder of the regular season (or about that), the Hawks will likely roll with Rawls at RB1, Fred Jackson as RB2, Derrick Coleman at RB3, and then maybe sign a guy like Kendall Hunter (worked him out last week) or Bryce Brown (was on the roster for a few weeks recently).