Has the lack of success by the Detroit Lions killed another great player’s career? I mean the same thing happened to the great Barry Sanders. Kind of, I guess?
Quietly, Calvin “Megatron” Johnson retired from the game of football yesterday at the age of 30. The age of 30! In his last season, he had 1,214 yards catching the ball and add nine receiving touchdowns to that. In both of those categories, he is still in the top ten.
In his career, he had 83 receiving TDs, 11,619 receiving yards, and 731 catches. His career yards and touchdowns are the most for someone who has no playoff wins. He holds 15 NFL records! He has the most receiving yards in an entire season! His 86.1 yards per game in his career is the high mark, number one of all wide receiver’s that have played 100 games. He has the most receiving yards by a receiver in his last year. He is also the only player in the Super Bowl era to have 120 yards per game in one season. With all of these stats and records, he did it with quarterbacks like Drew Stanton, Dan Orlovsky, an old Daunte Culpepper, and Shaun Hill. He had one decent QB in Matthew Stafford. Stafford in most years had many interceptions. He was blessed with the worst collection of passers of any of the great wideouts. Even worse QBs than Larry Fitzgerald.
He left the game only nine years in. He holds the third most receiving yards for a receiver’s first nine years. It’s not like DB found out how to defend Megatron. It was just another career cut short due to the failure of the Detroit Lions.
Calvin Johnson joins the great Barry Sanders as another Lions’ great to call it quits at the age of 30. And both players ended their career way too early. Johnson is still a top ten WR in the NFL and a number one WR on almost every 32 NFL teams. And Sanders was still making defenders look stupid in his final season in 1998.
It is just a disservice to the NFL fans across the board that we have to see these two greats not acquire great on the field team success. Between both of these great, Lions, they won only one playoff game. Just one. All because these players are just too loyal to the team that drafted them. The Detroit Lions are just killing these great careers, by not acquiring talent around them. But hopefully, for me, Johnson comes back in like a year or two. I hope that he goes to a good team and gets some playoff success. He is one of the only modern WRs that wasn’t a diva, and I wanted to see him, at least, win one playoff game.
Megatron will undoubtedly be missed by Matthew Stafford and the Lions, but also the whole league if he wants to stay retired. But those DBs in the NFL get to take a sigh of relief.