NFL retirement in 1999 is still relevant today. Jim Brown and Michael Jordan, on the other hand, moved on to new endeavors (acting and, in MJ’s case, baseball for a time) with their legacies secure. Sanders was 31, ringless, and a season or so away from becoming the NFL’s all-time leading rusher when he flew to London to avoid the press, faxing a farewell letter to his hometown newspaper on the eve of the Detroit Lions’ training camp. “Until yesterday,” one supporter grumbled, “OJ was my least favorite runner, but he only stabbed two people in the back.”
It’s taken Detroit repeatedly hitting rock bottom and other star players leaving the NFL in their primes – Calvin Johnson, for example – for fans to appreciate Sanders’ lionhearted call. The motivation for his early retirement has long been a mystery. Bye Bye Barry, a new Amazon Prime documentary, aims for more clarity but ends up grasping.
Of course, there would be difficulties in creating a film project centered on Sanders, one of the most understated superstars you’ll ever meet. He wasn’t so much afraid of the media as he was embarrassed by his celebrity, and he was eager to disappear whenever the spotlight became too intense. “Somethings are just unnecessary,” Sanders said on ESPN after going AWOL after being selected third in the 1989 NFL draft – between Deion Sanders and top pick Troy Aikman. “I’m not trying to downplay what you guys do, but you have to respect my judgment and the way I am as a person.”
Of course, creating a film project centered on Sanders, one of the most understated superstars you’ll ever meet, would be difficult. He was more embarrassed by his celebrity than he was afraid of the media, and he was eager to flee whenever the spotlight became too intense. “Somethings are just unnecessary,” Sanders said on ESPN after going AWOL after being selected third overall in the 1989 NFL Draft – between Deion Sanders and first-round pick Troy Aikman. “I’m not trying to downplay what you guys do, but you have to respect my judgment and the way I am as a person.”
Worse, directors Paul Monusky, Micaela Powers, and Angela Torma had a winning strategy in Sanders’ 2003 autobiography Now You See Me, which delves into his regrets, loneliness, and true feelings about his father, William. “I sometimes wondered if I was ever quite the son he thought I should be,” he writes in his memoirs. “One of the worst moments came shortly before the NFL draft deadline, when Daddy cornered me and cussed me out for even considering staying at Oklahoma State for my senior year.”
Without much introspection from their titular subject, Bye Bye relies on the NFL Films trick bag of soaring musical numbers, celebrity interviews (Jeff Daniels, Eminem), and archival footage – the star of the show by default. Poetry in motion is a phrase used to describe exhaustion in sports, but it truly applies in Sanders’ case. Even now, he’s unique in the game, a 5ft 8in 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. (Imagine Lamar Jackson on his best day against the Cincinnati Bengals, only faster.) Sanders’ ability to run circles behind the line of scrimmage,
Sanders, like a great painter or composer, was far better at letting the work speak for itself than explaining the strokes. It’s no coincidence that Bye Bye Bye comes out the week of Thanksgiving, a football holiday defined by Sanders’ ritual carving of my cursed Chicago Bears. (“I hope he doesn’t leave before we can give him the turkey leg,” Fox’s Thanksgiving Day host extraordinaire John Madden cracked as the clock ticked down on a three-touchdown masterpiece in 1997 that vaulted Sanders to second on the all-time rush list.) Sanders was head and shoulders above the rest in his day, when a running back was a team cornerstone rather than cannon fodder.
“I thought we were going to compete head to head for many more years,” Cowboys great Emmitt Smith says in one Bye Bye exclusive, recalling Dallas’ divisional round loss to Detroit in the 1992 playoffs. The fact that Smith surpassed Payton in total rushing yards never sat well with those outside of Dallas. Sanders toiled for a decade on truly dreadful Lions teams to produce his numbers, whereas Smith had five more years and a slew of All-Star teammates to assist him. Even Sanders laments in Bye Bye how much further he could’ve gone with a stronger supporting cast, but he refrains from subjecting Lions management to another round of scathing criticism from his book. As time passes and In terms of the question, “What was Sanders thinking?” the film is content to leave that task to longtime blockers Kevin Glover, Lomas Brown, Herman Moore, and legendary Lions coach Wayne Fontes. Sanders was most affected by seeing them and other key teammates leave for greener pastures and two more Lions stretchered into disability retirement, according to their accounts. (The astroturf field inside the dilapidated Pontiac Silverdome should have been enough to convince him to call it quits.) But I suspect Sanders was also concerned about the prospect of surpassing Payton in the same year Payton announced an irreversible bile duct cancer condition – which killed him three months after Sanders announced his retirement. If only someone had contacted Sanders about it.
Bye Bye is part of a larger NFL strategy to extend its TV dominance to streaming and capture the many younger viewers there – ironic, given that NFL Films practically invented the behind-the-scenes sports doc. But, in a new era where documentaries are crafted to be as engrossing as scripted dramas, it will take more than the typical effort that hooked NFL diehards watching on ESPN Classic. This documentary isn’t just a carbon copy of one of those old PR jobs – the last thing Sanders would want for himself. The entire production feels rushed and reheated.
Sanders has never been a more vulnerable target for the tough questions that have followed in the aftermath of the election.
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