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The Rams version of this series is July-22.
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/m...ions-cant-overshadow-barry-sanders-greatness/
The Good
The Lions draft Barry Sanders
There are four Hall of Famers from the 1989 NFL Draft class and, as it turns out, they were among the first five players selected. Barry Sanders, taken third overall out of Oklahoma State, was a first-ballot Hall of Famer following a prodigious 10-year career. When it was over, Sanders announced his retirement in a brief statement that belied his talents as one of the best running backs in NFL history.
During every one of his 10 seasons, which spanned 1989-1998, Sanders rushed for at least 1,100 yards (including 2,053 yards during the 1997 season), averaged 5.0 yards per carry (including 6.1 during the '97 season), and is third all-time in total rushing yards (15,269) behind only Emmitt Smith and Walter Payton.
In the five seasons before Sanders arrived in Detroit, the Lions averaged 4.8 wins a season. During his 10-year run, the Lions made the playoffs five times, including an NFC Championship Game appearance during the '91 season.
So, really, how good was Sanders compared to his peers -- and how important was he to Lions? It's easy to fall into the revisionist-history trap and pronounce him "one of the greatest ever" with some arm-waving and a few YouTube clips, but the stats -- both conventional and advanced -- back up claims of his dominance.
Barry Sanders was a great player on a lot of bad Lions teams. Getty Images
According to Football Outsiders' metrics -- which compare players on a play-by-play basis, Sanders ranked 3rd in total value among all running backs during his rookie season. And that pretty much was the case for the next nine years:
Sanders' rank compared to other RBs (via FO) 1990: 1st in total value 1991: 5th in total value 1992: 19th in total value 1993: 22nd in total value 1994: 2nd in total value 1995: 7th in total value 1996: 2nd in total value 1997: 2nd in total value 1998: 29th in total value
So yeah, maybe there's something to those YouTube clips...
Of course, before Sanders made his way to the NFL, he had to convince the league that he could come out of Oklahoma State after just three years. At the time, players were only eligible to enter the draft four years after high school. Sanders was willing to take the matter to court but the NFL relented in April 1989. Which led to a memorable pro day, as recounted earlier this year by former Detroit News beat reporter Mike O'Hara. Some highlights:
But by 1998, the Lions had slipped to 5-11. The following summer Sanders, then 31, faxed his retirement letter to the local newspaper.
"The reason I am retiring is very simple," Sanders said in a July 1998 statement. "My desire to exit the game is greater than my desire to remain in it."
"Ten years is a lot of football," Sanders told the Associated Press at the time. "I'm just really not feeling like playing. It's just getting to that point. It's not the same game. Really, I've been battling for the last few years. As I've gotten older, the game has changed in my mind. I'm thinking about doing other things. It's still fun, but not as much fun. It just felt like it was time."
In 2012, NFL Network aired "Barry Sanders: A Football Life," and the Hall of Fame running back offered some context to his retirement decision.
"Over the next few years it looked like we would probably be rebuilding and we had gotten rid of some good players," Sanders said. "I just felt like it was time to make a change.
"I knew going into (the final game of 1998 season) that was pretty much it, so I remember after the game I just broke down. I didn't really say what was going on. I was glad to get out of there."
Sanders left the game fewer than 1,500 yards behind Walter Payton, then the career rushing leader. It didn't matter.
"I understood full well who Walter Payton was, what he accomplished," Sanders said. "Not just Walter Payton, with all the guys that had tried to do what Walter did. The record for me wasn't important enough to force myself to stay around to try to get the record."
Lost in the seemingly abrupt end to Sanders' career is that after Sanders' announcement, the Redskins admitted they were interested in trading for the running back.
"Nothing's impossible, but it's a mathematical long shot," Vinny Cerrato, then the Redskins' director of player personnel, said at the time, according to the Washington Post.
The Bad
The Lions hire Matt Millen as president and CEO
Matt Millen has four Super Bowl rings from a 12-year playing career that included stops in Oakland, San Francisco and Washington. But no one remembers that because of what he perpetrated against the Lions for nearly eight years as the team's de facto general manager. He was known for many things during his tenure in Detroit, none of them good.
After retiring in 1991, Millen went into broadcasting, and when he was hired by the Lions in 2001, he had exactly zero NFL front-office experience. This fact would become a theme of his tenure, which lasted seven-plus years and did untold damage to the organization.
Some lowlights:
"DeMarcus Ware -- it wasn't even close," Millen told USAToday.com at the time. "You put the tape on, you see (the ability)."
Matt Millen remains reviled in the Motor City. USATSI
The Cowboys took Ware a pick later. Williams spent just two seasons with the Lions, where he managed just 37 receptions for 449 yards and 2 touchdowns. He played for three other teams over three seasons, his best campaign coming in 2010 with the Seahawks when he caught 65 passes for 751 yards.
Ware, meanwhile, was a dominant pass rusher during nine years in Dallas (including 20 sacks in '08 and 19.5 sacks in '11), and has 17.5 sacks -- and a Super Bowl ring -- in two seasons with the Broncos.
So why did Millen settle on Williams?
"I just capitulated," he admitted. "It's nobody's fault but my own."
Matthew Millen, who punched his father after the Williams selection, remembers thinking that his dad would be labeled a "buffoon" for letting Ware get away.
"It's part of what you've done, it's part of what you are," the elder Millen said. "But it's not like I hide from it. There was no success there, but anything you say about it sounds like an excuse, and I'm not about excuses. They're reasons after the fact. What can you say? ... You're better off saying nothing."
And that's what Millen did for the first few years after he was fired. But Lions fans can take solace in Millen's on-air apology while working in the broadcast booth late last season.
"A little bit of a tactical error on my part, I had this fleeting dream that I thought maybe I could run a team," Millen said during a Bucs-Colts game, via PFT. "Sorry, Detroit, it didn't quite work out."
But, hey, even Millen knew not to draft JaMarcus Russell. So there's that.
The Ugly
The Lions go 0-16
The good news: Matt Millen was canned three games into the 2008 season.
The bad news: Things would only get worse for the Lions, an outfit that hadn't won a game since Dec. 23, 2007 and wouldn't win another one until Sept. 27, 2009 -- a span of 21 games.
The 2008 Lions became the first NFL team to go 0-16, though they're not the first franchise to endure a winless season. The 1982 Colts were 0-8-1 during the strike-shortened season; the 1976 Buccaneers were 0-14 during their inaugural season; and the Cowboys were 0-11-1 during their inaugural season.
Not surprisingly, the '08 Lions ranked dead last in team efficiency, according to Football Outsiders, and perhaps no single play embodied the futility of the season more than quarterback Dan Orlovsky unwittingly running out of the back of the end zone for the saddest safety you'll ever see.
But Orlovsky doesn't bear all the blame; he went 0-7 while quarterbacks Daunte Culpepper went 0-5 and Jon Kitna went 0-4. They combined to complete 55 percent of their passes for 18 touchdowns and 19 interceptions. By comparison, opposing passers completed 68 percent of their passes for 25 touchdowns and a mind-blowing 4 interceptions. Lions QBs were sacked 52 times with a passer rating of 71.3; opponents just 30 times with a 110.9 passer rating.
There were plenty of low points that season, and one of the most notable came following a 42-7 Week 16 to the Saints. During the post-game press conference, Detroit News columnist asked coach Rod Marinelli if he wished his daughter had married a better defensive coordinator. (Joe Barry, then the Lions' defensive coordinator, was married to Marinelli's daughter.)
Marinelli -- along with the rest of the country -- didn't see the humor in Parker's question, and a day later, Marinelli refused to accept Parker's apology.
"Anytime you attack my daughter, I've got a problem with that," Marinelli said at the time, via mlive.com. "In a room of stink . . . and as a man and it was premeditated. I think there was something wrong with that, yeah. ...
"I didn't read [Parker's column], but I was told a little bit about it," Marinelli continued. "I don't accept anything. ... I had an assistant coach [Jim Colletto] one time make a remark with you guys that he didn't want to embarrass a player [Drew Stanton], did he take that remark back? Would you guys let him? No, you went from our practice field and ran to the locker room and put a microphone in front of the player -- and [the coach] didn't mean it that way.
"Do you remember that? To me, this is worse. Because his intent was to stir me up which is never going to happen. I can shoulder anything you bring. Easy. I can shoulder anything you bring."
Parker, who later gained notoriety for referring to Robert Griffin III as a " cornball brother," resigned from the News weeks after posing the son-in-law question to Marinelli.
If you're looking for a silver lining to the four-month debacle that was the '08 campaign: The Lions went 4-0 during the preseason, outscoring opponents 80-32.
The Bizarre
Marty Mornhinweg's decision to kick off after winning the overtime coin flip
To Marty Mornhinweg's credit, he was able to scrape together a handful of wins in his two mostly forgettable seasons in Detroit (he went 5-27 in 2001 and 2002), but he'll undoubtedly be remembered for his dubious decision to defend after winning the overtime coin toss in a 2002 game against the Bears. Chicago took over on their own 35-yard line and 13 plays and 53 yards later, Bears kicker Paul Edinger striped a 40-yard field goal for the (inevitable) win. Afterward, Mornhinweg defended himself against the many, many critics.
"The people who were there and know all the information ... know that it was the right call," Mornhinweg said, referring to the swirling winds and Soldier Field that informed his decision. "It was the right call then, it's the right call now, and it's the right call 10 years from now."
Thing is, he's not wrong. Thirteen years later, none other than Bill Belichick opted to kick off after winning the overtime coin toss, and the Patriots promptly lost to the Jets.
"We thought that was the best thing to do," he explained afterwards, sounding a lot like Mornhinweg.
In case you're wondering, ESPN's Brian Burke wrote this in the aftermath of Patriots loss: "Our latest win probability model estimates the recipient of the opening kickoff in overtime will win about 53.8 percent of the time, and setting aside ties, the kicking team will win about 46.2 percent of the time. Deliberately choosing to kick off without any overriding consideration would cost a team a 7.6 percent chance of winning."
In case you're wondering, part II: According to the blog Quirky Research, 14 teams have opted to defend after winning the overtime coin toss. Of those 14, eight teams went on to win -- including two of the three teams that did it since Mornhinweg in '02 (Belichick deferred and won in 2013; Mike Zimmer did it two years later with the Vikings). Also noteworthy: Super Bowl-winning coaches did it on six occasions (Hank Stram, Tom Landry, Bill Parcells, Mike Ditka, Mike Shanahan and Belichick).
While Mornhinweg probably deserved to be fired after mustering just five wins in two seasons, it wasn't unreasonable for him to choose to kick off in that winding game against the Bears. That said, the coin-toss incident -- and what you see below -- didn't help Mornhinweg's legacy:
* * *
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/m...ions-cant-overshadow-barry-sanders-greatness/
The Good
The Lions draft Barry Sanders
There are four Hall of Famers from the 1989 NFL Draft class and, as it turns out, they were among the first five players selected. Barry Sanders, taken third overall out of Oklahoma State, was a first-ballot Hall of Famer following a prodigious 10-year career. When it was over, Sanders announced his retirement in a brief statement that belied his talents as one of the best running backs in NFL history.
During every one of his 10 seasons, which spanned 1989-1998, Sanders rushed for at least 1,100 yards (including 2,053 yards during the 1997 season), averaged 5.0 yards per carry (including 6.1 during the '97 season), and is third all-time in total rushing yards (15,269) behind only Emmitt Smith and Walter Payton.
In the five seasons before Sanders arrived in Detroit, the Lions averaged 4.8 wins a season. During his 10-year run, the Lions made the playoffs five times, including an NFC Championship Game appearance during the '91 season.
So, really, how good was Sanders compared to his peers -- and how important was he to Lions? It's easy to fall into the revisionist-history trap and pronounce him "one of the greatest ever" with some arm-waving and a few YouTube clips, but the stats -- both conventional and advanced -- back up claims of his dominance.
Barry Sanders was a great player on a lot of bad Lions teams. Getty Images
According to Football Outsiders' metrics -- which compare players on a play-by-play basis, Sanders ranked 3rd in total value among all running backs during his rookie season. And that pretty much was the case for the next nine years:
Sanders' rank compared to other RBs (via FO) 1990: 1st in total value 1991: 5th in total value 1992: 19th in total value 1993: 22nd in total value 1994: 2nd in total value 1995: 7th in total value 1996: 2nd in total value 1997: 2nd in total value 1998: 29th in total value
So yeah, maybe there's something to those YouTube clips...
Of course, before Sanders made his way to the NFL, he had to convince the league that he could come out of Oklahoma State after just three years. At the time, players were only eligible to enter the draft four years after high school. Sanders was willing to take the matter to court but the NFL relented in April 1989. Which led to a memorable pro day, as recounted earlier this year by former Detroit News beat reporter Mike O'Hara. Some highlights:
- As Sanders, all of 5-8, walked onto the field for his workout, he stopped underneath the goal post, jumped, grabbed the cross bar, and did a one-handed chin-up.
- Sanders' vertical leap measured 40.5 inches. He wasn't satisfied, so he tried again, and improved to 41.5 inches.
- Sanders ran the 40-yard dash twice and he was timed at 4.39 and 4.43.
- Sanders was perhaps most impressive running passing routes. Partly because he hadn't done much football training since the season ended months before, partly because he ran those routes while wearing running shoes.
But by 1998, the Lions had slipped to 5-11. The following summer Sanders, then 31, faxed his retirement letter to the local newspaper.
"The reason I am retiring is very simple," Sanders said in a July 1998 statement. "My desire to exit the game is greater than my desire to remain in it."
"Ten years is a lot of football," Sanders told the Associated Press at the time. "I'm just really not feeling like playing. It's just getting to that point. It's not the same game. Really, I've been battling for the last few years. As I've gotten older, the game has changed in my mind. I'm thinking about doing other things. It's still fun, but not as much fun. It just felt like it was time."
In 2012, NFL Network aired "Barry Sanders: A Football Life," and the Hall of Fame running back offered some context to his retirement decision.
"Over the next few years it looked like we would probably be rebuilding and we had gotten rid of some good players," Sanders said. "I just felt like it was time to make a change.
"I knew going into (the final game of 1998 season) that was pretty much it, so I remember after the game I just broke down. I didn't really say what was going on. I was glad to get out of there."
Sanders left the game fewer than 1,500 yards behind Walter Payton, then the career rushing leader. It didn't matter.
"I understood full well who Walter Payton was, what he accomplished," Sanders said. "Not just Walter Payton, with all the guys that had tried to do what Walter did. The record for me wasn't important enough to force myself to stay around to try to get the record."
Lost in the seemingly abrupt end to Sanders' career is that after Sanders' announcement, the Redskins admitted they were interested in trading for the running back.
"Nothing's impossible, but it's a mathematical long shot," Vinny Cerrato, then the Redskins' director of player personnel, said at the time, according to the Washington Post.
The Bad
The Lions hire Matt Millen as president and CEO
Matt Millen has four Super Bowl rings from a 12-year playing career that included stops in Oakland, San Francisco and Washington. But no one remembers that because of what he perpetrated against the Lions for nearly eight years as the team's de facto general manager. He was known for many things during his tenure in Detroit, none of them good.
After retiring in 1991, Millen went into broadcasting, and when he was hired by the Lions in 2001, he had exactly zero NFL front-office experience. This fact would become a theme of his tenure, which lasted seven-plus years and did untold damage to the organization.
Some lowlights:
- The Lions were 9-7 the year before Millen was hired and 2-14 in his first season.
- From 2001-2003, the Lions were 0-24 on the road.
- The Lions were 31-81 under Millen.
- The Lions averaged 3.9 wins a season during Millen's reign, and never won more than 7 games (and that happened just once, in 2007).
- The 2008 team went 0-16 (Millen was fired in Sept. 2008 but this was the roster he assembled).
- Millen was ultimately responsible for using first-round picks on Joey Harrington (2002), Charles Rogers (2003) and Mike Williams (2005), all considered busts.
"DeMarcus Ware -- it wasn't even close," Millen told USAToday.com at the time. "You put the tape on, you see (the ability)."
Matt Millen remains reviled in the Motor City. USATSI
The Cowboys took Ware a pick later. Williams spent just two seasons with the Lions, where he managed just 37 receptions for 449 yards and 2 touchdowns. He played for three other teams over three seasons, his best campaign coming in 2010 with the Seahawks when he caught 65 passes for 751 yards.
Ware, meanwhile, was a dominant pass rusher during nine years in Dallas (including 20 sacks in '08 and 19.5 sacks in '11), and has 17.5 sacks -- and a Super Bowl ring -- in two seasons with the Broncos.
So why did Millen settle on Williams?
"I just capitulated," he admitted. "It's nobody's fault but my own."
Matthew Millen, who punched his father after the Williams selection, remembers thinking that his dad would be labeled a "buffoon" for letting Ware get away.
"It's part of what you've done, it's part of what you are," the elder Millen said. "But it's not like I hide from it. There was no success there, but anything you say about it sounds like an excuse, and I'm not about excuses. They're reasons after the fact. What can you say? ... You're better off saying nothing."
And that's what Millen did for the first few years after he was fired. But Lions fans can take solace in Millen's on-air apology while working in the broadcast booth late last season.
"A little bit of a tactical error on my part, I had this fleeting dream that I thought maybe I could run a team," Millen said during a Bucs-Colts game, via PFT. "Sorry, Detroit, it didn't quite work out."
But, hey, even Millen knew not to draft JaMarcus Russell. So there's that.
The Ugly
The Lions go 0-16
The good news: Matt Millen was canned three games into the 2008 season.
The bad news: Things would only get worse for the Lions, an outfit that hadn't won a game since Dec. 23, 2007 and wouldn't win another one until Sept. 27, 2009 -- a span of 21 games.
The 2008 Lions became the first NFL team to go 0-16, though they're not the first franchise to endure a winless season. The 1982 Colts were 0-8-1 during the strike-shortened season; the 1976 Buccaneers were 0-14 during their inaugural season; and the Cowboys were 0-11-1 during their inaugural season.
Not surprisingly, the '08 Lions ranked dead last in team efficiency, according to Football Outsiders, and perhaps no single play embodied the futility of the season more than quarterback Dan Orlovsky unwittingly running out of the back of the end zone for the saddest safety you'll ever see.
But Orlovsky doesn't bear all the blame; he went 0-7 while quarterbacks Daunte Culpepper went 0-5 and Jon Kitna went 0-4. They combined to complete 55 percent of their passes for 18 touchdowns and 19 interceptions. By comparison, opposing passers completed 68 percent of their passes for 25 touchdowns and a mind-blowing 4 interceptions. Lions QBs were sacked 52 times with a passer rating of 71.3; opponents just 30 times with a 110.9 passer rating.
There were plenty of low points that season, and one of the most notable came following a 42-7 Week 16 to the Saints. During the post-game press conference, Detroit News columnist asked coach Rod Marinelli if he wished his daughter had married a better defensive coordinator. (Joe Barry, then the Lions' defensive coordinator, was married to Marinelli's daughter.)
Marinelli -- along with the rest of the country -- didn't see the humor in Parker's question, and a day later, Marinelli refused to accept Parker's apology.
"Anytime you attack my daughter, I've got a problem with that," Marinelli said at the time, via mlive.com. "In a room of stink . . . and as a man and it was premeditated. I think there was something wrong with that, yeah. ...
"I didn't read [Parker's column], but I was told a little bit about it," Marinelli continued. "I don't accept anything. ... I had an assistant coach [Jim Colletto] one time make a remark with you guys that he didn't want to embarrass a player [Drew Stanton], did he take that remark back? Would you guys let him? No, you went from our practice field and ran to the locker room and put a microphone in front of the player -- and [the coach] didn't mean it that way.
"Do you remember that? To me, this is worse. Because his intent was to stir me up which is never going to happen. I can shoulder anything you bring. Easy. I can shoulder anything you bring."
Parker, who later gained notoriety for referring to Robert Griffin III as a " cornball brother," resigned from the News weeks after posing the son-in-law question to Marinelli.
If you're looking for a silver lining to the four-month debacle that was the '08 campaign: The Lions went 4-0 during the preseason, outscoring opponents 80-32.
The Bizarre
Marty Mornhinweg's decision to kick off after winning the overtime coin flip
To Marty Mornhinweg's credit, he was able to scrape together a handful of wins in his two mostly forgettable seasons in Detroit (he went 5-27 in 2001 and 2002), but he'll undoubtedly be remembered for his dubious decision to defend after winning the overtime coin toss in a 2002 game against the Bears. Chicago took over on their own 35-yard line and 13 plays and 53 yards later, Bears kicker Paul Edinger striped a 40-yard field goal for the (inevitable) win. Afterward, Mornhinweg defended himself against the many, many critics.
"The people who were there and know all the information ... know that it was the right call," Mornhinweg said, referring to the swirling winds and Soldier Field that informed his decision. "It was the right call then, it's the right call now, and it's the right call 10 years from now."
Thing is, he's not wrong. Thirteen years later, none other than Bill Belichick opted to kick off after winning the overtime coin toss, and the Patriots promptly lost to the Jets.
"We thought that was the best thing to do," he explained afterwards, sounding a lot like Mornhinweg.
In case you're wondering, ESPN's Brian Burke wrote this in the aftermath of Patriots loss: "Our latest win probability model estimates the recipient of the opening kickoff in overtime will win about 53.8 percent of the time, and setting aside ties, the kicking team will win about 46.2 percent of the time. Deliberately choosing to kick off without any overriding consideration would cost a team a 7.6 percent chance of winning."
In case you're wondering, part II: According to the blog Quirky Research, 14 teams have opted to defend after winning the overtime coin toss. Of those 14, eight teams went on to win -- including two of the three teams that did it since Mornhinweg in '02 (Belichick deferred and won in 2013; Mike Zimmer did it two years later with the Vikings). Also noteworthy: Super Bowl-winning coaches did it on six occasions (Hank Stram, Tom Landry, Bill Parcells, Mike Ditka, Mike Shanahan and Belichick).
While Mornhinweg probably deserved to be fired after mustering just five wins in two seasons, it wasn't unreasonable for him to choose to kick off in that winding game against the Bears. That said, the coin-toss incident -- and what you see below -- didn't help Mornhinweg's legacy:
* * *
