Aside from consistent futility, if the Lions have ever been really good at one thing it pissing off the two of the greatest offensive talents the organization, and NFL for that matter has ever seen.
Luckily for Detroit, the embarrassment of Barry Sanders walking away from the game in his prime because he simply couldn’t take playing for the Lions any longer has subsided since return to the team. Yet the pain still lingers on for fans of the one of the saddest franchises in all of professional sports when you consider Detroit was unable to do anything with arguably the greatest running back football has ever witnessed.
Which leads us to Calvin Johnson, who like Barry walked away from football because the Lions essentially killed any drive he had left for the game.
But can the Lions like they did with Barry repair their relationship with Megatron? Well it seems like Calvin has given some insight on where the Organization can start.
Via the Detroit Free Press:
“They already know what they got to do,” Johnson told the Free Press at the annual camp he runs for local high school students Saturday in metro Detroit. “The only way they’re going to get me back is they put that money back in my pocket. Nah, you don’t do that. I don’t care what they say. They can put it back, then they can have me back. That’s the bottom line.”
What Johnson is referring to is the portion of the $16 million dollar signing bonus from 2011 the Lions made him pay back when he announced his retirement. This was a similar douchebag revenge tactic used by the team back when Sanders announced his retirement as well. Nonetheless it seems like a pretty small price to pay for an NFL team that essentially prints money given the League’s revenue sharing model. Not to mention when you consider the massive amounts of additional revenue Calvin helped bring into this sad sack of a Franchise.