It was July, 1999. The Tigers were, once again, stumbling and bumbling their way through the American League. Nothing much happening, except Lions training camp, which was about to start.
Then the news hit. The Internet and talk radio started bubbling rapidly, like molten lava.
Barry Sanders, the jitterbug running back, had retired. Just like that. Faxed in his intentions, then hopped a plane for England.
But only those with deaf ears and blinders on could have been TRULY rocked by the announcement, which slugged Lions fans in the gut. For months, Sanders’s unhappiness with the organization was being talked about by his father, William. If his son had his way, William Sanders asserted, he’d walk away from football. That’s how bad things had gotten for the most exciting player in franchise history.
Nobody listened. Certainly no one with the Lions. Except Coach Bobby Ross, who peppered Barry with letters and phone calls. Not once did his star running back pick up a phone, or drop a line in the mail. The silence, to coach Ross, was deafening.
The silence was broken that July morning, the day before the Lions were to report for camp. Barry Sanders has retired. Pass it down.
At first, the delivery of such abhorrent news was met with denial. A bad, twisted joke, it must have been. Only a fiction writer could think of it: Barry Sanders quits the Lions, on the eve of training camp. When he had all year to tell the team of his intentions.
He had. But no one was listening.
Only later was it revealed: that the Lions had been aware of Sanders’s disgust, far in advance of his quitting. William Sanders’s warnings throughout the spring should have been heeded, after all.
Yet the Lions didn’t take their best player seriously, apparently.
Someone would have to play running back for the 1999 season, even though the notion of replacing the 10-year veteran Sanders with anyone other than Jim Brown himself was considered unfathomable – and futile. That notion proved absolutely correct.
The Lions found someone. He was Greg Hill, the erstwhile runner from Kansas City. He had never rushed for more than 667 yards in any NFL season. Barry Sanders, alone, had tripled that in 1997. Simply put, Hill was to Barry Sanders what saccharin is to sugar. But then again, someone would have to play running back for the 1999 season.
The statistics read thusly:
1998: Sanders (343 carries, 1,491 yards, 4.3 avg)
1999: Hill (144 carries, 542 yards, 3.8 avg)
Saccharin, indeed.
But that was eight years ago. Surely enough time for an organization to recover, find a fairly suitable replacement, and move on with its life.
It’s my contention that the Detroit Lions are still struggling to find the air that was kicked out of them when Barry Sanders quit on them so suddenly in 1999.
It’s not just the matter of who will carry the football, though that’s been tough enough to determine. When Sanders bolted, it set off a chain reaction of events – mostly bad. It’s happened before with the Lions.
In October 1962, a loss was suffered on a gray, muddy day in Green Bay that many point to as being the negative splitting of the team’s atom.
The Lions, leading the division-leading, undefeated Packers by a measly point, 7-6, had the ball as the clock stubbornly wound down. It was third down, around midfield. A couple minutes remained. The Lions really didn’t need a first down. A punt deep into Packers territory would probably do the trick. But quarterback Milt Plum faded back to pass. Receiver Terry Barr ran his route, turned, and … fell down in the Green Bay mud. Plum’s moist pass fluttered to cornerback Herb Adderley, who raced down the sidelines, well into field goal range. As the seconds ticked down, Paul Hornung booted the game-winning kick.
That 9-7 loss to the Packers, a game that clearly should have been won and thrusted the Lions into the thick of the playoff race, tore the team’s heart out. In the locker room after the game, defensive tackle Alex Karras, enraged by Plum’s flippant response when he asked who the dumb S.O.B. was who called the pass play, hurled his silver Lions helmet at the surprised QB, missing his head by inches.
“Even the newspaper guys who traveled with us, who were usually like pallbearers, were trying to cheer us up,” Karras once said about the plane ride back to Detroit.
The Lions got their revenge of sorts when they beat the stuffing out of the Packers that Thanksgiving. But the damage was done. Vince Lombardi’s men ended up wearing championship rings that the Lions figured should have been theirs.
In the 44 seasons after that ’62 debacle, the Lions have won one playoff game. And many feel the downward spiral began on a muddy field in Wisconsin, with an errant pass and a slip-sliding wide receiver.
And so it has been with Barry Sanders’s retirement. The Lions went 8-8 in ’99, but slumped badly toward the end of the year. They were blown out in the playoffs. In 2000, Ross pulled his own Barry – quitting abruptly, in November. The Lions still had a chance for the playoffs. But a Paul Edinger field goal on the last play of the season lifted the Bears over the Lions. No playoffs. A housecleaning began. The Matt Millen Era was dumped upon an unsuspecting Lions fan base.
In six seasons with Mr. Millen running things, the Lions are 24-72.
Would all that had happened if Barry Sanders stayed unretired in 1999? Probably not, though it’s unclear how much better things would have been.
This ISN’T unclear: the Lions still struggle to find their footing eight years after Sanders’s retirement. Their running game is almost annually moribund. They still seek players who can provide weekly excitement. They haven’t sniffed the playoffs.
Barry left, and so much life left with him. I wonder if he knows what he’s done. I wonder if he knew at the time. Then again, did Milt Plum know what he was about to unleash?
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