Written by Michael Rothstein at ESPN.com
While there’s no real animosity between the longtime star and the franchise, former Detroit Lions receiver Calvin Johnson told the Detroit Free Press on Saturday that he wasn’t completely pleased with how he was treated by the club when he retired in March 2016.
When the newspaper asked Johnson about the possibility of his No. 81 jersey being retired — something the franchise did not do last season, nor did it honor him in any significant way — he said he doesn’t like to talk about the Lions much.
“I don’t even like to talk Lions too much just because the way our relationship ended,” Johnson told the newspaper. “If they see me around here, we’ll see. But hey, I don’t know.
“I just didn’t feel like I was treated the way I should have been treated on the way out. That’s all. I mean, it’s all good. I’m not tripping. I don’t feel any kind of way, just hey, that’s what they did. Hey, it is what it is.”
Johnson declined to specify what he was unhappy with about how his retirement played out — saying “it’s simple; it’s easy when you think about it.”
When Johnson retired, he paid back $320,000 of the signing bonus on his final contract, one-tenth of the $3.2 million the Lions could have collected. Not every team in the NFL requests prorated signing bonus repayments, particularly from star players like Johnson.
Johnson, the NFL’s single-season receiving yards record holder with 1,964 in 2013, is Detroit’s franchise leader in almost every major receiving category, including receptions (731), yards (11,619) and touchdowns (83).
He retired mostly because of injuries. Over his final few seasons, he suffered injuries to his knees, fingers and ankles. In a lengthy December interview with ESPN, Johnson explained that some of his fingers still don’t bend correctly, he has a pinched nerve in his shoulder, and during his season on “Dancing with the Stars,” his ankles continually gave him trouble.
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