It’s been a good year for Marshawn Lynch, even without getting the chance to become the face of the nation.

Lynch, who has received a $5 million raise for returning to the Seahawks, gone to Turkey to promote football, and has a movie about him (although pretty much everyone — including Lynch — thinks it’s not very good), will now appear in the video for Beast Mode, a new song from Ludacris.

“I met him and literally within like two minutes I felt like we were family,” Ludacris a/k/a Chris Bridges told ESPN earlier this week. “I don’t know what it is. He’s real cool, real laid back guy. He was a fan. He was talking about how much his mom was a fan, so I told him I’m a fan of his.

“We inspire each other. That’s why it was great for us to get together. When everybody sees the video you’ll think it’s a great, great concept to put these two things together — music and football.”

The song isn’t the only thing that carries Lynch’s nickname. In Seattle, the “Beast Mode O.G.” marijuana strain has been followed up with “Beast Mode 2.0″ (or “Beast Mode Blue Fire”). But even though Lynch lives in one of the two states in which marijuana is legal, noted marijuana aficionado Snoop Dogg says Lynch doesn’t partake.

“My homeboy got a career to play,” Snoop Dogg recently told TMZ, via seattlepi.com. “He’s still in the NFL. He’s got a Commissioner to deal with. Somebody named it after him.”

So Marshawn doesn’t smoke at all?

“No, he does not. I do it for him,” Snoop Dogg said.

For any player not in the drug-testing program, the reality is that he can smoke at will after taking his annual test for street drugs. But with the window for testing opening on April 20, any player inclined to sample the Beast Mode blend should have stopped last week, since it takes 30 days for the metabolites to exit the system. [NBC Sports]