Megatron slams door shut on any possible return - 'I can't bend my ankles'
For roughly five years after Barry Sanders retired in 1999, there was a lot of speculation regarding whether Sanders would pull a Michael Jordan and tell the NFL, “I’m back.”
That never came into fruition, as Sanders reaffirmed that his desire to exit the game was greater than his desire to stay in it.
Now, almost 20 years later, another generation of Detroit Lions fans are giddy over the thought of Calvin Johnson unretiring and returning to the team. Like Sanders before him, though, the wide receiver they nicknamed “Megatron” seems more than happy in retirement.
Not only has he mentally removed himself from the game, but physically, Johnson doesn’t even believe he could still play pro football anymore.
“I don’t (think so), man, cause I get up from the bed sometimes in the morning, I’m just like, I shuffle across the ground cause I can’t bend my ankles,” Johnson told Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “That was my problem when I played, just ankle’s always stuck or swelled up, I can’t flex them. If you can’t flex your ankles then you’re just running flat-footed all the time.”
Over his nine-year career, Johnson missed just nine games due to injury and played in all 16 games in 2015, his final season.
But he actually had to be coaxed into playing in 2015 by his father and was unsure how to break the news to then-coach Jim Caldwell that it would be his last season in the NFL.
“I was so stressed out,” Johnson said. “I was thinking about that more in the last three games than anything else. I was like, ‘Dang, man. How the h— am I going to tell Coach?’”
“I asked my dad, asked my sister. And I was like, ‘Maybe I’ll just tell him like right before the last game. I’ll like go to his office on Friday, or tell him like Saturday night before the game.’ And I was like, ‘Dang, (I can’t). That’s just a big a– distraction right before the game.'”
Johnson ended up telling Caldwell during his exit meeting right after the 2015 season ended, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Megatron was on a Hall-of-Fame path and set numerous records during his nine years in the league. He holds the single-season receiving yards mark, and was the fastest player to reach 10,000 career receiving yards.
Many of those accomplishments came with Matthew Stafford at quarterback, and Johnson said Stafford could sense that they were playing their final games together during the 2015 season.
“I don’t know how he knew, but he told me at the end of the game, or the next day, a couple days later, he’s like, ‘I knew,’” Johnson said. “And I could tell that he knew. It was something I could tell by the way he was looking.”
Today, Johnson is involved in philanthropic efforts both in Detroit and in his hometown of Atlanta. Moreover, his wife is expecting their first child together in August.
He said he won’t prevent his children from playing football, but he also won’t push them into the sport.
“I don’t want him to take no pounding at all. I don’t want him to get in his head,” Johnson said, referring to his 4-year old son Caleb. “I already understand the significance of that, just try to protect him as much as I can.”
Johnson will be eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2021 alongside Peyton Manning, Charles Woodson and Jared Allen.
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