Roary
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- Mar 18, 2019
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Wide receiver Calvin Johnson and the Lions have been on bad terms since the team required him to return a portion of his signing bonus when he retired after the 2015 season, but Lions president Rod Wood recently said that repairing that relationship is a “top priority.”
Johnson has said that “the only way they’re going to get me back is they put that money back in my pocket” and another former Lion with some experience on this front weighed in on the dispute Wednesday. Barry Sanders also had to pay back bonus money when he retired and stayed away from the Lions for years before returning to work as an ambassador for the franchise in 2017.
Sanders believes that things will eventually thaw between Johnson and the team, but doesn’t have advice about how to speed up that process.
“Hey, that’s a tough check to write,” Sanders said, via the Detroit Free Press. “In the NFL you realize it’s a business and they have to handle things on their side of it the way that they do. So I don’t have any advice other than I think over time then you’ll probably see the two sides come together. You think they’d be able to reach some agreement. But I wish Calvin well. We’d love to have him back around, especially the fans, what have you.”
Making Johnson an offer to be paid in an ambassador role similar to the one Sanders holds could be one way to mend the fences in Detroit.