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Calvin Johnson knew long before anyone else that the 2015 season was going to be his last. Johnson, six-time Pro Bowler, three-time All-Pro, and a member of the 2010 NFL All-Decade team, was actually planning to call it a career after the 2014 season.
Johnson, who spent his entire nine-year career with the Detroit Lions, traveled to Georgia in the offseason to share his plans with his father. Sitting on his dad’s couch, Johnson, who was only 29 at the time, explained why he felt it was time to step away from the game.
“I was like, ‘Dude, daddy, I’m done. I can’t do it anymore, “” Johnson recalls during his recent appearance on the new episode of “All the Smoke” with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson available on Showtime Basketball YouTube.
“They’re blowing up the team. My body hurts. I don’t have my range of motion like I used to. I can’t get out, I can’t dig like I used to. I just don’t I feel it . I just don’t love it because I was still in pain. I just don’t have it. “
Johnson’s father, using just a few words, convinced his son to delay his retirement a little longer.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Do you think you can do this one more time?’ Johnson remembers. “I sat there and paused for a second, and after I paused for a second he said, ‘Okay, you can at least do it once. Furthermore.'”
With that, Johnson returned for what would be the final season of a career that will almost surely end up on display in the Pro Football Hall of Fame (Johnson is first eligible in 2021). In his final season, the man known during his playing days as Megatron was selected for his sixth consecutive Pro Bowl after catching 88 passes for 1,214 yards and nine touchdowns. He retired as the all-time leader of the franchise with 731 receptions for 11,619 yards and 83 touchdowns. Johnson, who has led the NFL in receiving twice, amassed a single-season NFL record of 1,964 receiving yards in 2012.
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Johnson, who retired at age 30, joined Hall of Fame running back Barry Sanders as icons of the Lions who moved away from the game still in their prime. Like Sanders, the team’s lack of success contributed to Johnson’s decision to leave when he did. During his nine years at Detroit, Johnson, who was part of the 2008 Lions team that scored 0-16, only played on two winning teams. These teams landed in the playoffs before suffering in the first round.
“It was unfortunate,” Johnson said. “You can’t help but feel like we clearly haven’t maximized the talent that we had. And all anyone can do is point their finger and say, ‘What could I have done better? ‘ I could have had, maybe, 2,000 yards or 1,500 yards a year, and that could have helped, or maybe there was a ball that I could have, should have caught.
“Just the simple fact that we didn’t maximize talent. You put me on offense, you got [Matt] Stafford, you have Ndamukong Suh on defense. You have beasts all around the team in key positions that you should be able to have as a winning team. We just didn’t have the winning culture. There are many more than these key players. “
Johnson said if he had had the opportunity to play for a contender, he might have continued to play beyond the 2015 season. In fact, Johnson said that Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Often pressured him to trade his Blue Lions for Green Packers when the division’s enemies clashed.
“Every time we played Green Bay, every time Aaron Rodgers was on our sidelines, he was like, ‘Hey man, you gotta come over here,’” Johnson recalls. “I said, ‘Hey, I wish I could do that.'”
Johnson, had a tumultuous relationship with the team after the Lions forced him to repay part of his signing bonus from the eight-year extension he signed in 2012.
“This is the reason for the rift between the team and me,” Johnson said. “I had to pay back some money. The reason I am not involved with them is because of this. You can’t get me a refund and you always want me to come back. It doesn’t work like that. “
While his relationship with his former team could be better, Johnson, now 35, appears to be a man at peace with his career. Johnson, a father of two young children, said he was keeping himself busy in retirement.
“It happened so fast,” Johnson said of his career. “When you’re just trying to live in the moment, time flies. I just try to always be the best version of myself, and perfect whatever tasks I focus on. It’s just the principle of the way I live. ”
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