Barry Sanders!!! What a fantastic way to start a career!

Barry Sanders’ rookie season was an amazing opening act for what would become a Hall of Fame career. It was really just a preview. 1989 was simply a glimpse of how amazing a course he would set. But, not only did he show us his enormous talent, he gave us a pretty clear picture of who he was as a man.

First of all, like many very high draft picks in the pre-free agency era, he held out at the beginning of training camp. In fact, he held out the entire training camp … every single practice, meeting, get together – never to be seen by anyone in the Lions organization.

He finally reported the Wednesday or Thursday before the opening game in 1989. Obviously, his appearance was met with great anticipation. Now, undoubtedly there were a lot of people – including teammates and coaches who viewed his holdout as normal, but by waiting until the very end of camp it also had some of the people wondering if he was really worth all of this attention.

What would he become – a great one, some mediocre overpaid player or maybe even a first round flop?

Well, by the end of the season and during the last game of 1989 we had a pretty good idea that the Lions had captured lightning in a bottle. On the final Sunday of the season on a day that produced a steady, cold drizzle in Atlanta we realized that the Lions had selected one of the best players football had ever seen.

In that last game in Fulton County Stadium we also got a pretty good idea of what a fine person we had in our locker room. Not only did the Lions have a fantastic player, but a humble young man who was not going to be a statistic driven, self-centered braggart like so many other great athletes are.

To set the stage – Barry had played only about a quarter in the opening game, he then missed the next game with a rib injury. Yet, despite having played less games and having 100 fewer attempts than his rival runners he still was in a tight race for the NFL rushing leadership on the final day of the season.

He and Christian Okoye of the Kansas City Chiefs had staged a nip and tuck weekly battle for the lead during the last month of the schedule. Well on the last Sunday of the season the Chiefs were playing at the same time as the Lions.

So, on the final game day of the season we were all watching not only our game – but, we were also keeping an eye on the TV monitor in our coaching booth to see how the two running greats were doing comparatively.

Well, as the game was winding down the Lions had sewed up the victory and now our true attention turned to what Okoye was doing in the KC game. As it turned out as the Chiefs completed their game we still had about five minutes or so to play.

The final tally in the Chiefs game had Okoye leading Barry in rushing yardage by about ten yards or so. But, there was plenty of time for Barry to win the rushing title since we did have the ball.

The problem was that Barry was now on the bench and Tony Paige was getting the workload as our halfback while we were running out the clock.

Wayne Fontes our head coach had called up to the coaching booth and asked how many yards Barry needed to gain to take the lead. We told him that if Barry ran the ball a few times he would easily gain ten yards and take home the rushing crown.

This is no disrespect to the Falcons – it’s just that when Barry gets his focus on something – well, he is always great – but when he “zeros in” he is nothing short of amazing.

Wayne – says to us that he is going to put Barry back in the game so that he can get the honor of leading the NFL in rushing in his rookie year.

Wayne approached Barry on the bench and tells him that he only needs a few more carries to win the rushing championship. He asked him to go in and run “31 and 32” (obviously two of our running plays) a few times to gain the necessary yardage.

I heard it with my own ears through Wayne’s headset. Barry said something to the effect. “Look coach – let Tony Page run 31 and 32 a few times – we already won the game. Let Tony play he deserves it. I’m done for the day unless you really want me to go back in.”

Amazing that someone who had a chance at earning this fantastic honor through his efforts for an entire season just steps back. He was happy to watch his teammates like Tony Page have a chance to shine a little themselves.

By the way, he had slipped his shoes off on the bench after he came out of the game. Pretty much letting everyone around him know he was done for the day and running for a few more yards – not that important.