Williams' Mouth Roars, Even When Lions Don't

The three no. 20s left mouths agape in their day. Speechless is what folks were rendered whenever Lem Barney, Billy Sims, or Barry Sanders did their thing. And speechless was mostly their own style off the field. Three of the greatest Lions ever, and between them maybe a half dozen good quotes. They liked talking with the football in their hands.

Loquaciousness hasn’t been the rule around Lions Land. In the few times when it’s happened, the words have usually turned around to chomp the speaker in the posterior.

Lomas Brown, Pro Bowl offensive tackle, was full of jingoism one day as the Lions got ready to play the Philadelphia Eagles in a playoff game, in 1995. The team had won its last seven games to get into the post-season.

“I guarantee,” Lomas said, “that we will win this game.”

At the time of his fit, the Lions had won but one playoff game in 38 years. Yet Brown put it out there – the flimsy player guarantee of victory. Ever since Joe Namath, we’ve been deluged with phony baloney promises of football satisfaction for the fans. They are usually self-posterior-chewing words.

So the Lions traveled to Philly, guaranteed a victory by their starting left tackle. All they’d need to do, according to Brown’s words, was go through the formalities of slipping on their uniforms and putting in their 60 minutes, punching out, and flying home to play another round. Guaranteed.

Then the Lions, playing in front of a national TV audience, spotted the Eagles a 51-7 lead before capitulating, 58-37. No Namath touch for Lomas. And no more talking, either – by any Lions player, for years.

Until now.

Roy Williams is a prototypical NFL star wide receiver. That is, he’s tall, strong, and capable of big plays. It also means he’s flamboyant and a character. Whenever he catches a ball that results in a Lions first down, he makes what is now becoming his signature gesture: kneeling on one knee as he thrusts his right arm forward, signaling the new set of downs.

But that’s on the field. It’s off the field where Williams has made his biggest departure from Lions players of yore.


Like this helmet, Williams' words often come off the top of his head

Roy Williams talks. A lot. He’ll talk about anything. Football. Video games. Pizza delivery. How cheap he is. The Lions’ next opponents.

And that was just last week.

Frankly, I find it refreshing. The Lions finally have a player who isn’t afraid to choke on his own speech. And Lord knows there’ve been some instances…

“We left 40 points on the field,” Williams said after the Lions’ opener in 2006, in which they scored six against the Seattle Seahawks.

“We’re the best 1-5 team in the league,” he said after the Lions fell to – you guessed it – 1-5 last season.

And another of those self-posterior-chewing guarantees.

“I guarantee we’ll win next week,” Williams crowed after that Seattle loss. The next week’s game was against the Chicago Bears, on the road.

The Lions lost, 34-7.

But that didn’t stop Williams from talking. Nothing does. But that’s OK. The rest of the league is starting to take notice of Williams’ propensity to blab, with the Lions off to a nifty 3-1 start. He’s frequently the target of the pre-game boom mikes – the ones that capture the flamboyant NFL star speaking directly into the hand-held camera and telling it what to expect that day.

“Opening Day…first game for the rookie…Megatron,” Williams was saying before the Lions opener in Oakland last month, into one of those pre-game cameras and microphones. He was referring to the highly-touted receiver Calvin Johnson.

“Gonna hit the end zone today,” Williams continued, now talking about the receiving corps and himself. “I’d say we’ll get three today. Yeah – three TD passes today. At least. Rook’s gonna get one, too.”

The Lions got their three TD passes that day – including Johnson’s first ever. The Lions won, refusing to collapse into defeat in the fourth quarter.

As his team gets better, Williams’ words get more prophetic. Funny how that works.

But not everyone is charmed by his verbosity.

Last week, Williams got some ink and airplay for a comment he made regarding his own cheapness.

“I don’t tip the pizza guy,” Williams said into a microphone – the kind that broadcasts the words spoken into it over the airwaves. “I don’t. I’m not even sure what to give. I mean, I’m polite. I say ‘Thank you, sir.’ But the pizza guy knows that when he comes to my house, he’s coming for free.”

It wasn’t enough, in some people’s minds, to write those words off as “Roy being Roy.” Williams makes a base salary in the seven digits. The notion of a millionaire refusing to tip the “pizza guy”, and it being cute, didn’t set well with lunch bucket Detroiters.

It grew legs, as these things sometimes (ahh) do. A local pizzeria offered to have Williams deliver pies for a shift, to see what it was like. All in good fun, of course – except for those offended to begin with.

Lem Barney never offended. Sims never did. And aside from that whole retiring early thing, Barry Sanders never did, either. But Barney, as a player, rarely said anything worth remembering – and that’s no knock. Same for Sims and Sanders. They were reserved, professional-to-the-hilt players who made us gasp on a whole lot of Sundays.

Roy Williams makes us gasp on all the other days. Sometimes he makes us gag. But he keeps us interested in between games. He is, in that sense, among the rarest of Lions.

Besides, pizza guys don’t HAVE to go to his house. He gets what he pays for.