Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images
Barry Sanders' retirement from the NFL in 1999 is still smart. In any case, Jim Brown and Michael Jordan turned to new pursuits (acting and, in MJ's case, baseball for a while) with their legacies secured. Sanders was 31, ringless and about a season shy of becoming the NFL's all-time fastest leader when he fled to London to escape the press and, on the eve of Detroit Lions training camp, faxed a farewell letter to the newspaper in his hometown. . "Until yesterday," one supporter sniffed at the time, "OJ was my least favorite runner, but he only stabbed two people in the back."
It took Detroit hitting rock bottom time and time again and other star players leaving the NFL in their prime - not least Calvin Johnson - for fans to appreciate Sanders' lion-hearted appeal. It is the motivation behind his early retirement that has long been so mysterious. A new Amazon Prime documentary called Bye Bye Barry strives for greater clarity, but ultimately comes across as catchy.
Of course, there were certainly challenges in building a film project around Sanders, one of the most understated superstars you'll ever encounter. Rather than being wary of the media, he was ashamed of his celebrity status and was eager to disappear from view whenever the spotlight became too intense. "Some things are just not necessary," Sanders said 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 guys have to respect my judgment and the way I am as a person."
Since then, the 55-year-old Sanders has grown into a cuddly figure who is no longer so serious these days. But Bye Bye doesn't exactly prepare him for the kind of deep introspection that Jordan and Brown show in their docs - a real bummer for an NFL Films crew that rarely has to worry about access. (Disclosure: I was an intern at NFL Films during the 2001 season.) Over the course of the documentary's 90-minute running time, producers interrogate Sanders under the lights of the Fox Theater, fly him and his sons back to London - but do not that. Don't really pull much out of him.
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Worse, directors Paul Monusky, Micaela Powers and Angela Torma had a winning playbook in Sanders' 2003 autobiography Now You See Me - in which he discusses his regrets, his loneliness and his true feelings about his father, William. "I sometimes wondered if I would ever become the son he thought I should be," he writes. "One of the worst moments happened just before the NFL draft deadline, when Dad cornered and berated me for even considering staying at Oklahoma State for my senior year."
Without much in-depth introspection on their titular subject, Bye Bye draws from the familiar NFL Films bag of tricks with soaring musical numbers, celebrity interviews (Jeff Daniels, Eminem) and archival footage - the star of the show by default. Poetry in motion is a phrase often used in sports, but in Sanders' case it really applies. Even now, he remains like nothing the game has ever seen: a 6-foot-10 Houdini with his own talent for moving the chains, an escape artist with a flair for dodging would-be tacklers before turning on the jets. (Think of Lamar Jackson on his best day against the Cincinnati Bengals - alone more unstoppable on the run.) Sanders' knack for running circles behind the line of scrimmage, extending 30 yards to gain just three, also made him the king of negative carries.
Like the brilliant painter or composer, Sanders was much better at letting the work speak than at explaining the strokes. It's no coincidence that Bye Bye falls the week of Thanksgiving, 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," cracked Fox CEO John Madden, Thanksgiving Day host extraordinaire, as the clock ticked on a three-touchdown masterpiece in 1997 that lifted Sanders into second place of all-time.) In Sanders' day - when a running back was the team's cornerstone 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 - light work for someone who was barely a year removed from becoming the third back to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season. "You can see the love for the game in Barry's eyes, performance and in the way he carries himself off the field," said Walter Payton, the God of the Bears who knocked Brown from Mount Rush-More into the NFL. "Even though you cheered against Barry's team, you always respected him as a player."
Looking back, Sanders' retirement should not have surprised anyone, considering how many times he had refused the spotlight in the past - by failing to set a high school rushing record or stiff-arm the massive attention that descended on him when he claimed the 1988 title. Heisman Trophy in the state of Oklahoma. "In the end, a man won the prize [based] on pure skill," Aikman said after UCLA's charm offensive failed to put the quarterback over the top.
"I thought we'd be competing against each other for many years to come," Cowboys great Emmitt Smith said in an exclusive Bye Bye, recalling Dallas' blowout loss to Detroit in the divisional round of the 1992 playoffs. That Smith ultimately Payton overachieved in terms of total rush, never quite matching those outside of Dallas. Sanders spent a decade toiling for some truly rotten Lions teams to get his numbers, while Smith had another five years and a slew of All-Star teammates to help him. In Bye Bye, even Sanders laments how much further he could have gone with a stronger supporting cast - but he doesn't subject Lions management to another round of scathing criticism from his book. As time passes and emotions cool, Sanders' retirement looks more like the ultimate chess move, sacrificing transient glory for his longer-term well-being.
As for the question, What was Sanders thinking?, the film happily leaves the shedding of light on this issue to longtime blockers Kevin Glover, Lomas Brown, Herman Moore and legendary Lions coach Wayne Fontes. According to their story, seeing them and other key teammates leave for greener pastures and two more Lions retire was what affected Sanders the most. (The astroturf field in the much-deteriorating Pontiac Silverdome should have been reason enough for him to call time.) But I suspect Sanders also felt queasy at the prospect of surpassing Payton in the same year that Payton was diagnosed with an irreversible condition of the bile ducts - which resulted in death. him three months after Sanders' retirement announcement. If only someone had told Sanders about this in the doctor's office, especially now that he isn't avoiding anyone anymore.
Bye Bye is of a piece with a larger NFL strategy to extend its TV dominance into the streaming world and captivate the many younger viewers there - ironic, considering that NFL Films practically invented the sports documentary behind the scenes. But standing out in a new era where documentaries are as compelling as scripted dramas will take more than the typical effort that captivated NFL diehards watching ESPN Classic. This documentary doesn't just play like a facsimile of one of those old PR jobs - the last thing Sanders would want for himself. The whole production feels a bit rushed and reheated.
Sanders has never been a ripe target for the tough questions that followed his sudden retirement. It's a shame that Bye Bye lets Houdini slip under the same old shroud again.