Lions-Johnson 'cold war' has one culprit: Rod Wood

Despite Wood still being the team president, Calvin Johnson seems willing to bury the hatchet.

Penny wise and pound foolish.

It’s a phrase almost as old as time itself. But it’s still alive and kicking—and often it’s so, so appropriate.

Seven years ago, the Lions, a multi-billion dollar entity, quibbled with their Hall of Fame receiver, Calvin Johnson, over less than two million bucks and it’s still haunting them.

Just like the Bears did with Hall of Famer Dick Butkus. And like the Eagles did with Hall of Fame center/linebacker Charlie Bednarik.

Penny wise. Pound foolish.

The Bears and Butkus couldn’t see eye-to-eye on the middle linebacker’s career-ending knee injuries and got into a money snit about it with old Dick. At issue was his last contract, which also promised necessary medical and hospital care which, according to Butkus, the Bears neglected to provide him, causing irreparable damage to his knee. The Bears then told him he would not be paid if he could not play. Butkus filed suit against the Bears' team doctor in May 1974 asking for $600,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.

The two parties eventually settled out of court but Butkus and Bears owner George Halas didn’t speak for years afterward. And Dick Butkus, along with Gale Sayers, were pretty much the only reasons you would care to pay admission to see the Bears when they played.

Penny wise. Pound foolish.

With Bednarik, the Eagles refused to buy copies (for the players) of Concrete Charlie’s book, written in 1996, some 36 years after Chuck retired. The team cited NFL rules that supposedly would be broken had they done so. How no one in the organization could have gotten creative and bought 50 copies of Charlie’s book at $15 a pop and manage to get them into the players’ hands, we’ll never know. But the snub caused Bednarik to be estranged for more than a decade from the Eagles, the only NFL team he’d known. Just like Calvin Johnson with the Lions and Dick Butkus and the Bears.

Things got so bad that Charlie rooted against the Eagles, openly, during their appearance in Super Bowl XXXIX (2005).

Penny wise. Pound foolish.

The Lions, of course, ticked Johnson off by asking for a partial repayment of a signing bonus that the team felt he owed them by retiring before the contract ended. The total was $1.6 million. The Lions’ net worth is more than $3 billion, so you do the math.

The bad guy in the Johnson-Lions situation appears to be president Rod Wood, who Johnson won’t even mention by name.

Only now is Johnson, after many pathetic attempts by the Lions organization since 2016 to mend fences, appearing to be thawing his relationship with his former team.

Penny wise. Pound foolish.

In recent months, Johnson, inducted into the HOF in 2021, has publicly been seen at Lions OTAs. Just last week he said that if young receiver Jameson Williams needs a mentor, Johnson is up to the task. His words have indicated that Johnson is as open as he’s ever been to being a part of the Lions family again.

But Johnson still won’t speak to Rod Wood.

The Johnson fiasco is just another black eye for a football franchise that has had a lot of them. Just because things are calming down now doesn’t mean that the damage won’t follow the team. Way more than it will follow Johnson.

The Lions bungled this. Frankly, I don’t know what they were thinking, asking Johnson for that pittance of money back. I suppose they felt it was a principle thing, but even then, they were wrong.

This is a franchise that caused its previous Hall of Famer, Barry Sanders, to become so disillusioned with the direction of the franchise, that he quit on the eve of training camp in 1999 by fax. And it took a few years for Barry and the Lions to cozy up to each other again.

The Lions, under the Bill Ford/Martha Ford ownership (which they still were when Johnson retired), were notorious in their skin flint ways about things that they shouldn’t have been skin flint about. They were….altogether now: Penny wise and pound foolish.

Such was the case of Calvin Johnson, who’d given his blood, toil and sweat to the team for nine years. Yet for whatever reason, the Lions chose to ask for $1.6 million as a “retirement fee,” which it essentially was.

Why?

The Johnson debacle has been not a major distraction, but it served as a scab that wouldn’t fully heal. It was always “out there,” even if it wasn’t on the front pages. It put the Lions in awkward situations, such as in Canton in 2021, when CJ went into the HOF. The Lions were well-represented at the ceremony, of course, by owner Sheila Ford Hamp, Wood and other executives. Johnson only had cursory words for the Lions contingent on site, while the team put out a love-filled statement that smacked of a parent who’s ready to welcome a wayward child back into the fold.

But in this case, the parents were in the wrong.

The Lions have made some pathetic, unrequited attempts to get Johnson back.

The team once offered to pay Johnson $500,000 a year for three years to show up and speak at team events and donate an additional $100,000 to a charity of his choice, but he did not accept the offer, stating, "they need to figure out a way to do it and not have me work for it. Because I already did the work for it.”

Johnson has also gone on record saying that the Lions and he will never have a relationship until the team stops treating players “like pawns.”

Well, things appear to be not as frigid, but it’s because of Calvin Johnson’s desires—not the team’s. Which is how it always goes.

The apparent, gradual reunion of Calvin Johnson and the Lions is nice to see but it never should have come to this. The franchise alienated one of the few truly great players under the Ford ownership and I just don’t know why.

Actually, I do know why. Because Rod Wood is a moron.

Penny wise. Pound foolish.