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Calvin Johnson is considered one of the best pass catchers in football history. Over his nine seasons with the Detroit Lions, he set multiple league records and brought the team to the playoffs twice, including their best record since 1991.
He also had one of the best nicknames in the sport: Megatron, as in the Transformers character, but where did it come from? That nickname came from fellow wide receiver Roy Williams.
During a training camp in 2007, Williams noticed the then-rookie Johnson's size (6' 5", 237 lbs) and compared him with the Decepticon leader:
"I've never seen anything like him. He's a big, strong, physical, fast guy. We call him Megatron."
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That nickname soon stuck, and Johnson more than lived up to it.
Revisiting Calvin Johnson's legendary career
After three momentous years at Georgia Tech, Calvin Johnson was drafted second overall by the Detroit Lions in 2007.
During the Draft combine, he impressed scouts with a 4.35-second 40-yard dash (still the fastest by a player 6' 5" or taller) and 42.5 vertical leap, contributing to his high draft position. He proved his potential on the field, catching 48 passes for 756 yards and four touchdowns.
Johnson broke out in his second season, notching up over 1,000 receiving yards and leading the league in receiving touchdowns (12). Unfortunately, the Lions went 0-16, the first team since the schedule expansion to fail to win a single game.
That disastrous season allowed the Lions to draft quarterback Matthew Stafford first overall the next year, and he would forge an immediate connection with Johnson.
In their second season together, the wide receiver had a league-best 1,681 yards and a career-best 16 touchdowns. The team went 10-6 and returned to the playoffs, only to lose 45-28 at the New Orleans Saints in the Wild Card Round.
The next year, Calvin Johnson broke the NFL record for most receiving yards at 1,964 (from a league-high 122 catches). However, the Lions regressed to 4-12, including losing their last eight games and missed the playoffs again.
He would not make it back to the playoffs until 2014, when the Lions went 11-5, their best record since 1991, only to lose 24-20 at the Dallas Cowboys.
Why did Calvin Johnson retire early?
By the end of the 2015 season, Calvin Johnson had amassed a list of accolades worthy of a Hall of Famer: multiple receiving records, four All-Pro selections and six Pro Bowls. On March 8, 2016, though, he shocked fans by announcing his retirement. He was only 30 at the time and still considered to be in his prime.
At the time, he said that lingering injuries had forced him out of the sport. However, speaking to Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on All the Smoke in 2020, he admitted that, like Barry Sanders before him, he felt worn down by the Detroit ownership's lack of urgency in building a winning culture:
"It was unfortunate. You can't help but have the feeling like we obviously didn't maximize the talent that we had. ... You got me on offense, you've got (Matt) Stafford, you got Ndamukong Suh on defense.
"You've got some beasts all around the team in key positions that you should be able to have a winning team. We just didn't have the winning culture, though. There's a lot more than goes into it than having those key players."
