The startling, spontaneous, unconventional, abrupt departure of Barry Sanders from the Detroit Lions five years ago now makes obvious sense.
The way he ran through the NFL for 10 years had to be the way he would run away.
As he runs into the Hall of Fame on Sunday, football fans are just beginning to catch up to him. If it has been difficult for people to wrap their arms around his decision, what else is new?
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The Lions have won only 27 games since he left. They won 38 in his last five years, 40 in his first five and only one playoff game, but no matter what, games may never again be as exciting. Chicagoans who watched Michael Jordan can relate.
So as Sanders prepares to enter the Hall along with Denver quarterback John Elway, Minnesota defensive end Carl Eller and Philadelphia-Los Angeles-Oakland offensive tackle Bob Brown, former Lions teammates are reminiscing.
Defensive end Robert Porcher was a rookie in 1992 and the Lions opened in Chicago.
“It’s just a little off-tackle play,” Porcher recalls. “The quarterback gives to Barry. He takes the ball and starts coming toward our sideline. Richard Dent, Steve McMichael and Mike Singletary are coming up.
“There’s nowhere to go except run out of bounds or turn it up.”
Porcher’s eyes light up now. A dozen years cannot dim the memory. But words are no longer enough for Porcher. He must re-enact the play in slow motion.
“He turns it up and when he does, Singletary comes and is like this ready to hit him,” Porcher says. “But Barry spins in the air and lands like this and he’s gone to the house.
“I’m standing right there and I had seen him on television, but I hadn’t seen him, you know what I mean? I just grabbed the guy next to me and started yelling: `Did you see that?! Did you see that?!’
“I remember McMichael didn’t even chase the ball. He just stood there and watched him run into the end zone. And every time I see that highlight, I’m pointing to the television, saying, `I’m right there! I’m standing right there!'”
Porcher reacted like an eyewitness to the extraterrestrial.
Dick Jauron played for the Lions before Sanders and coached against him with Green Bay and Jacksonville. He just got to know him as the Lions’ new defensive coordinator.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a back like that and I don’t know that I ever will again because he was so unhittable,” Jauron says. “He could make you miss in so many ways and he could outrun you and he was so little. He appears to be such a good guy, such a normal guy for such an abnormal athlete, such an above-normal athlete. If you walked into a room of 1,000 people, he might be the 900th guy you’d pick out as a player.”
Lions players and fans didn’t appreciate it when Sanders left the team hanging like a frustrated tackler before training camp in 1999. Yet they also remember Sanders as an extraordinarily unselfish player. It’s all part of the riddle.
“The great part about him was it was never really about him,” says blocking back Cory Schlesinger. “When he scored a touchdown, he didn’t draw all the attention to himself. The coolest part about him is he’d come back and congratulate all his teammates. It wasn’t all him. He knew those guys helped, even though most of the time it was him.”
“I don’t remember any resentment,” says kicker Jason Hanson. “He wasn’t a selfish guy and everybody knew that. Now, were guys disappointed that one of the best players who ever played the game was leaving the team? Sure. But I don’t know that it was disappointment in him as much as it was that you had a sense an era was passing.”
Porcher remembers the departure this way: “The only quarrel, not quarrel … the only thing he did wrong … no, I shouldn’t say wrong … I just wouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have faxed in a letter.”
Sanders just disappeared.
“When you have the kind of success Barry Sanders had, that’s just something you do in person,” Porcher says.
Sanders resurfaced last year when promoting a book and explained, “It was just time to move on.”
“He still had to answer all the questions five years later,” Porcher says. “But it was good he did do it because now you could see the peace in his face, in his eyes. Now he knows he’s done it right.”
Porcher appreciated how Sanders always was more of a doer than a talker. Whether he gained 50 yards or 200, win or lose, Sanders would repeat his Monday weight routine and run his daily post-practice sprints, proving that as easy and natural as the great ones make it look, the greatest also work the hardest.
“He never strayed. He caused me to change the way I prepared for a game,” Porcher says. “A couple years ago, he and his wife were in Orlando with me and my wife. I told him I really appreciated just watching him work. He didn’t know he was doing it but it caused me to change how I approached my career because I didn’t take it for granted.”
Sanders appeared at the Lions’ season finale against St. Louis last year. Lions officials, fearing the possibility of boos for the prodigal son, prepared a highlight video to stoke the crowd. The scoreboard screen malfunctioned after only one or two runs, but it was enough to ignite a huge ovation.
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Sunday, 40,000 fans are expected at Ford Field for a Lions practice that will include a videotape of the day’s induction ceremonies in Canton, Ohio, plus a live feed of Sanders.
When his election was announced in February, Sanders said: “When I think about my 10 years and the people who came to see, they saw something–and I guess it goes for all the honorees–they saw something that was unique in us, something they may not see just any old Sunday.”