Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson made his weekly appearance on 97.1 The Ticket’s Valenti and Foster radio program and was asked a very direct question, are you happy playing in Detroit?
His statements after the question were really not too surprising…
“Put it like this, if we turn this thing into a winner, I’m happy,” Johnson said via the Detroit Free Press. “I’ve won 11 games since I’ve been here in four years. Losing definitely sucks and you definitely don’t want to be around losing. You can’t get used to that.
“I can’t get used to it because I haven’t come from that. I’ve been used to winning. And if this thing can’t get turned around, man, like I said — I’m just going to leave it at I can’t get used to it. I want to win.”
Also, like a lot of Lions fans, Calvin seemed a little baffled by some of the play calling on offense…
“I don’t understand, teams tend to play a lot of Cover 2, our receptions go down. We got to come up with something for it. They were playing Cover 2 for most of the game.”
Again, this all isn’t too surprising considering all the accolades Calvin had coming out of Georgia Tech then having to deal with all the losing during his pro career with the Lions. The thing about Calvin though is personality wise he isn’t like some of the more outspoken wide receivers in the league, like a Terrell Owens or Chad Ochocinco. Because of this it may have been hard to develop a clear understanding on how he actually felt about the Lions’ situation until now.
But does Calvin need to be more outspoken?
Sure it seems like Terrell Owens or Ochocinco generate more problems then they do actual positive performance but it probably wouldn’t hurt if Calvin took a page out of their book. He needs to be more open about what he wants out of this team because at this point it seems the Lions coaching staff simply isn’t getting that message.
We’ve all heard of coaches putting pressure on their players or call out their players to perform better. Calvin Johnson is one of those rare talents that can call out the coaches for the sake of performance.
Source: Detroit News, ProFootballTalk.com, 97.1 The Ticket
