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The Seahawks' two-year run atop the NFC is over. Perhaps Marshawn Lynch's time with the team is up as well. Could his time in the NFL be in question as well?

It's an outcome fantasy football owners should be prepared to handle.

Seahawks general manager John Schneider said in a radio interview with ESPN Seattle Friday that he expects Lynch to retire.

"I know that we're going to treat him with as much respect as we possibly can here," Schneider explained, "and give him a little leeway to kind of find his way in terms of what he wants to do. But I'm under the impression that he's leaning towards retirement."

As Profootballtalk.com's Zac Jackson notes, if Lynch retires he’ll owe the Seahawks $5 million in bonus money, so his best play is to wait for the team to release him. His release seems inevitable since he’s due $9 million from the Seahawks next season.

Whether it's retirement or a release, Lynch surely would lose a financial face-off with Thomas Rawls, who is due to make $525,000, with a cap number of $530,000.

As PFT's Mike Florio recently noted, apart from the very real contractual differences (and not nearly as dramatic production gap), Lynch has been a handful, to say the least, for the Seahawks in recent years.

The former franchise cornerstone played in just seven regular-season games in 2015, the first injury-filled season of his nine-year career. He turns 30 in April. He’s considered retirement in each of the last two offseasons.

Rawls should be recovered from a broken ankle in time to be Lynch’s replacement as lead running back for the start of next season.

Also worth noting, it’s not a coincidence that the best seven-game stretch of quarterback Russell Wilson’s career has come with Lynch out of the building.

Indeed, this is Wilson's offense now and the Seahawks' offense missed a beat down the stretch while Lynch, and then Rawls were on the sidelines.

Stay tuned. This is a story we'll all be watching over the coming weeks.