Barry Sanders is my favorite Detroit Lion of all time, as he may be for most of you. For many seasons, he was literally the only reason to watch Lions football. Sanders made those many under .500 seasons tolerable.

As good as he was, I’ll admit Sanders wasn’t the greatest all around football player. Off the field, Sanders wasn’t a locker room leader, and many think, myself included, his refusal to speak up, and his tacit approval of Wayne Fontes, helped spiral the Lions deep into mediocrity towards the end of his career.

On the field, Sanders wasn’t a great blocker, and didn’t catch many passes out of the backfield. He wasn’t used effectively on goal line situations, but much of the blame, like most of the Lions’ issues in the 90’s, I put upon the coaching staff.

But when Barry Sanders carried the ball, in my eyes, there was no one better. Period. Not Jim Brown, Walter Payton, or God forbid, the current rushing yardage record holder, Emmitt Smith.

We all know the old barroom argument. If you had put Sanders behind the monster offensive lines Smith had to run behind in Dallas, surrounded with All-Pro personnel, the skies the limit as to the yardage he could have put up. 20K? Not out of the realm of possibility.

Vice versa, put Smith behind some of the yo-yo’s the Lions had on the offensive line in the 90’s, and having to deal with the even bigger yo-yo’s at QB, (Rodney Peete, Erik Kramer, Andre Ware, Scott Mitchell, Charlie Batch) and coaching the team (Wayne Fontes, Bobby Ross), would he have broken Payton’s record? With all apologies to my Fan Sided compadres at The Landry Hat, Smith would have put up good numbers, but he wouldn’t have broken ANY records.

Lions fans remember some of Sanders’ best runs were of the 2 and 3 yard variety, where he was dodging tacklers in the backfield, let alone at the line of scrimmage. A Lions’ running play was often dependent on his making the first 2 guys miss. Sanders always had more than his share of carries for negative yardage, some due to his style of running, but mostly due to the clowns “blocking” (Term used quite loosely) for him.

When Sanders retired unexpectedly just before training camp in 2000, many…Hell, most Lions fans were left with an extremely bitter taste in their mouths. There was the fact he left the Lions hung out to dry, leaving them with Greg Hill, Ron Rivers and Sedrick Ervin to carry the load at running back. It was as bad as it looks. Combined, they couldn’t reach a 1000 yards rushing.

There was also the fact Lions fans felt Sanders had taken away from them the NFL career rushing record, which he would have blown out of the water, and taken out of reach of any current back, if he had played for a few more years.

Was the unhappiness over Sanders not breaking the NFL record selfish on the part of the fans? Unquestionably. Was the backlash over his retirement considerable? Without a doubt. Was it deserved? No, at least not to the point where it became unreasonable.

Sanders had every right to retire. I’m not going to hold his wanting to live the rest of his life relatively pain free against him, especially when you see the suffering of crippled NFL retirees. Could his retirement been handled better? Christ, that’s an understatement. It couldn’t have been handled any worse! Faxing your retirement announcement to the Tulsa World less than a week before camp starts, then leaving the country for an extended trip to Europe? Even the dumbest man in the NFL, Matt Millen, would have said, “You’ve got to be kidding me, what the Hell are you thinking?!”

The long accepted story regarding Barry Sanders’ retirement was that he was tired of Ross’ hardass, “My way or the highway,” “You’ll get a bus ticket out of town” ways, and was worn down by the years of losing, with little to no hope of it ever improving.

In fact, Emmitt Smith has said as much in a recent interview with the aforementioned Tulsa World.

I have had that conversation with Barry and Barry basically shared with me that he had had enough of football, No. 1, and possibly enough of dealing with the situation that he had to deal with up there in Detroit, being the go-to guy the whole time and not having the support, or what is perceived as a complete support staff around him like I had.

For Smith to say he had a “complete support staff,” while looking back at the bozos surrounding Sanders, that may the understatement of the ages. Smith played for one the historically best organizations in sports, while Sanders was a member of a decades’ long bottom feeder.

It was also well known in Detroit that Sanders didn’t live and breathe football, felt playing in the NFL was a job, not his passion, and only played the game as a means to an end. So I can fully understand Sanders saying he “had enough of football.”

Smith continued…

Obviously I had a great quarterback with Troy Aikman and I had Michael Irvin and and Jay Novacek and so forth. But when you looked at the Detroit Lions, and as I look at it and evaluate what Barry Sanders meant to that organization, he meant everything in the entire world to that organization. And for him not to have had a championship run is kind of disappointing and I think a person can only go through that for so long before they get enough.

I totally agree with Smith, Sanders WAS the Detroit Lions. Though I think he underestimates some of the talent surrounding Sanders in the early to mid 90’s. Herman Moore, Bret Perriman, Chris Speilman, Lomas Brown, Kevin Glover, Bennie Blades, Henry Thomas, Stephen Boyd, Robert Porcher, Johnnie Morton, all were all very good (Maybe even great in the case of Moore, and you could make a case for Blades and Speilman) NFL players. Not Hall of Famers like those on the Cowboys, but players who could start on any NFL team.

Where the Lions truly lacked in comparison to the Cowboys of that era were in ownership, coaching (By extent, the front office), and under center.

Fontes was a clown who lucked into the Lions head job, managed to finagle complete control of football operations, then did everything humanly possible (Firing coordinators after every season, changing offenses at the drop of a helmet, ingratiating himself with the Fords) to keep that job. Well, save for one thing…Winning. Comparing Fontes to Jimmy Johnson would just piss me off, so I’m not going to bother. Let’s just say Johnson was a winner everywhere he coached, while Fontes was good for laughs, and not much else.

Same goes for comparing William Clay Ford to Jerry Jones. Jones is an innovative, money be damned, win at any and all costs owner. Ford is the exact opposite. Old school to the point of irrelevancy, penny smart yet pound foolish, and wanted to be surrounded by coaches and front office personnel he liked, no matter how badly they preformed otherwise.

To compare QB’s, Troy Aikman to Scott Mitchell, is insulting to Aikman. Aikman was everything Mitchell wasn’t, especially in the intangibles. I hate to bring up the toughness factor, talk about a player’s “heart,” but in Scott Mitchell’s case, I’ll make an exception. Aikman was a tough leader, the Cowboys would follow him anywhere. Mitchell was a happy footed follower, whose teammates couldn’t trust him to preform under even the least amount of pressure.

Looking back at that era, it’s hard to believe that in 1991, when the Lions beat the Cowboys to move on the NFC title game, both teams were thought to have a chance to become the “Team of the decade.” Obviously, the Cowboys lived up to the billing, while the Lions, even with the best running back of all time, could do no better than getting knocked out in the wild card round a few times.

Smith finished by saying the following…

And as you get older, football starts to wear on you. It wears on your mind mentally as well as beating your body up physically. And so if the organization doesn’t look like it is headed in the direction you want it to go in, it can definitely weigh on you heavily.

So is it any wonder Barry Sanders retired when he did? We fans were just as sick and tired of the Lions’ organization as Sanders, but he was in the place to do something about it. Sanders saw the writing on the wall, and got out while the getting was good. He’s happy and healthy in retirement, while we fans have the memories.

I’ve long forgiven Barry Sanders for how he retired. Going on almost a decade after the fact, most Lions fans have as well, save for the handful of know-nothing grudge holders who boo him whenever he appears in the D.

If you want to dish out blame for the odd end to Sanders’ career, blame William Clay Ford and the Detroit Lions.