Detroit Lions
The new documentary attempts to get to the bottom of the legendary running back’s decision to leave the game while he was still in his prime
Barry Sanders’ NFL retirement in 1999 still stings. At least Jim Brown and Michael Jordan moved on to new pursuits (acting and, in MJ’s case, baseball for a time) and their legacies were secure. Sanders was 31, ringless and about a season away from becoming the NFL’s all-time scoring leader when he fled to London to escape the press and wrote a suicide note to the newspaper on the eve of Detroit Lions training camp faxed to his hometown. “Until yesterday,” one supporter fumed at the time, “OJ was my least favorite runner, but he only stabbed two people in the back.”
Detroit had to repeatedly hit rock bottom, and other star players – not least Calvin Johnson – left the NFL in their prime so that fans would appreciate Sanders’ bold call. It is the motivation for his early retirement that has long been so mysterious. A new Amazon Prime documentary called “Bye Bye Barry” aims to provide more clarity, but ultimately remains comprehensible.
Of course, there were bound to be challenges in building a film project around Sanders, one of the most understated superstars you’ll ever meet. He wasn’t so much wary of the media as embarrassed by his celebrity status and eager to disappear as soon as the spotlight became too intense. “Some things are just unnecessary,” Sanders said after being stunned on ESPN after being selected third overall in the 1989 NFL draft, between Deion Sanders at No. 5 and top pick Troy Aikman. “I’m not trying to downplay what you guys are doing, but you have to respect my judgment and the way I am as a person.”
Since then, the 55-year-old Sanders has developed into a cuddly figure who isn’t quite as serious these days. But “Bye Bye” doesn’t exactly prepare him for the kind of deep introspection that Jordan and Brown display in their docs — a real disadvantage for an NFL Films team that rarely has to worry about access. (Disclosure: I was a college intern at NFL Films during the 2001 season.) Over the course of the documentary’s 90-minute running time, the producers interrogate Sanders under the lights of the Fox Theater, fly him and his sons back to London – do it but not. I can’t really get much out of him.
Worse, directors Paul Monusky, Micaela Powers and Angela Torma had a winning script in place in Sanders’ 2003 autobiography, Now You See Me – which deals with his regrets, his loneliness and his true feelings towards his father, William . “I sometimes wondered if I would ever be the son he was supposed to be,” he writes. “One of the worst moments came right before the NFL draft deadline when Daddy cornered me and berated me for even considering staying at Oklahoma State for my senior year.”
Without much deeper introspection into the titular theme, “Bye Bye” falls back on NFL Films’ familiar bag of tricks of up-and-coming musical numbers, celebrity interviews (Jeff Daniels, Eminem) and archival reels – by default, the star of the show. Poetry in motion is a phrase used to the point of exhaustion in sports — but in Sanders’ case, it really applies. Even now, he’s unlike anything the game has ever seen – a 5-foot-10 Houdini with his own knack for moving the chains, an escape artist with a knack for evading would-be tacklers before turning on the jets . (Think of Lamar Jackson on his best day against the Cincinnati Bengals – only more unstoppable on the run.) Sanders’ talent for running circles behind the line of scrimmage, lunging 30 yards just to gain three, made him also the king of negative carries.
Like the brilliant painter or composer, Sanders was much better at letting the work speak than at explaining the lines. It’s no coincidence that Bye Bye drops Thanksgiving week, a football holiday that Sanders defined with his ritual carving of my cursed Chicago Bears. (“I hope he doesn’t leave before we can give him the turkey leg,” said Fox’s John Madden, Thanksgiving Day host extraordinaire, as the clock ticked down on a 1997 three-touchdown masterpiece that Sanders put on took second place (all-time rushing list.) In Sanders’ day – when a running back was a cornerstone of the team and not cannon fodder – he was head and shoulders above the rest.
At the end of the 1998 season, Sanders was just 1,458 yards away from breaking the all-time rushing record – easy work for a man who was barely a year away from becoming the third player to rush for more than 2,000 in a season yards managed. “You see the love for the game in Barry’s eyes, his performance and the way he carries himself off the field,” said Walter Payton, the Bears’ god who knocked Brown off the NFL’s Mount Rush-More. “Even though you cheered on Barry’s team, you always respected him as a player.”
In retrospect, Sanders’ retirement shouldn’t have surprised anyone, considering how often he had refused to step into the spotlight in the past – without grabbing a high school rushing record or the enormous attention he received. when he won the 1988 Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma State. “Finally someone won the prize [based] “Solely based on sheer skill,” Aikman said after UCLA’s charm offense failed to get the better of the quarterback.
“I thought we would be competing for many more years,” Cowboys star Emmitt Smith says in an exclusive Bye Bye, recalling Dallas’ stunning loss to Detroit in the divisional round of the 1992 playoffs. The fact that Smith ended up surpassing Payton in total rushing yards never quite sat well with people outside of Dallas. Sanders worked on some really lazy Lions teams for a decade to put up his numbers, while Smith had five more years and a slew of All-Star teammates to help him. In “Bye Bye,” even Sanders laments how much further he could have gotten with a stronger supporting cast — but stops short of subjecting the Lions’ management to another round of scathing criticism from his book. As time passes and emotions cool, Sanders’ resignation looks more like the ultimate gambit, sacrificing temporary fame for his longer-term well-being.
As for the question, “What was Sanders thinking?”, the film happily leaves the task of shedding light on the matter to longtime blockers Kevin Glover, Lomas Brown, Herman Moore and legendary Lions coach Wayne Fontes. According to her, what affected Sanders most was that she and other key teammates left for greener pastures and that two other Lions were forced into retirement. (The artificial turf field at the deteriorating Pontiac Silverdome should have been reason enough for him to call it quits.) But I suspect that Sanders also felt uneasy about the prospect of surpassing Payton, the same year that Payton announced that he was suffering from irreversible bile duct cancer – which led to his death three months after Sanders’ resignation announcement. If only someone had informed Sanders about all of this in the document, especially now that he is no longer hiding from anyone.
Bye Bye falls in line with the NFL’s larger strategy to expand its TV dominance into the streaming world and attract the many younger viewers there – ironic, considering NFL Films practically invented the behind-the-scenes sports documentary. But standing out in a new era where documentaries are expected to be as compelling as scripted dramas will take more than the typical effort that has captivated die-hard NFL fans watching on ESPN Classic. This documentary doesn’t just seem like a facsimile of one of those old PR jobs – the last thing Sanders would want. The entire production feels a bit rushed and heated.
Sanders has never been a greater target for the difficult questions that arose after his sudden resignation. It’s a shame that Bye Bye lets Houdini disappear under the same old shroud.
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