Calvin Johnson and Marshawn Lynch left college together a decade ago and went 10 picks apart in the first round of the 2007 NFL draft.
They worked out together as they prepared for the NFL combine, and they walked away from the game together months apart after the 2015 season.
But while Lynch reconsidered his retirement and eventually returned to football earlier this spring, Johnson, the Detroit Lions’ all-time leading receiver, said Saturday he has never once thought about joining his friend on the field.
“I don’t really think about it too much because I got so much going on,” Johnson told the Free Press after his annual “Catching Dreams” football camp Saturday at Southfield (Mich.) High. “I came in with Marshawn. We worked out together down in Orlando with Tom Shaw. I'm going to see him next week because I'm going out there to work with Oakland. But I don't feel any kind of mixed emotions about it now.
“It doesn’t make me think about coming back, not at all.”
Johnson, 31, is content in retirement even as he says he doesn’t want to “talk Lions too much just because the way our relationship ended.”
He’s happily married and planning a move to his native Georgia later this year. He’s less than a month away from getting his real estate license in Michigan. He still wants to finish his degree at Georgia Tech (and is hoping they offer more online classes to allow him to do so).
And he’s still heavily involved in both the Detroit and Atlanta communities, refurbishing houses in the inner city and running events like his camp Saturday for nearly 100 players from Southfield and L’Anse Creuse high schools.
Unlike many NFL players, Johnson neither advertises nor charges for his camp, which he runs through his Calvin Johnson Jr. Foundation.
And on Saturday, he was joined on the field by a star-studded cast of former teammates: Ziggy Ansah, Ameer Abdullah, Darius Slay, Tahir Whitehead, Rob Sims, Joique Bell, Devin Thomas and new Lions draft picks Jarrad Davis and Jalen Reeves-Maybin.
“This is something I started, so honestly it’s a responsibility that I have,” Johnson said. “But I enjoy doing it, too. There’s so much knowledge I gained that I can give back to these guys and they just absorb it so it makes it that much more fun because they're attentive to it.”
Johnson spent Saturday working hands-on with a group of about a dozen receivers, and sharing the wisdom he gleaned from nine years in the NFL with the camp as a whole.
He smiled as much as he ever did as a player, and looked like he could suit up for the Lions if that was something he wanted.
“Stuff like this, being able to come out here and work with guys every now and then, it’s like (my cousin with) his ministry, I feel the same kind of way,” Johnson said. “It’s my way of giving back and teaching these kids and teaching them how to do things the right way.”
Johnson caught 731 passes for 11,619 yards and 83 touchdowns in his career. He holds the NFL single-season receiving record with 1,964 yards, and still bears some physical scars from his time with the Lions.
Credit: Nicholas Hunt
Credit: Nicholas Hunt
On Saturday, Johnson wore a splint on the left index finger he required surgery on a few years back, and said he feels aches from playing the game.
“If I’m doing stuff physically, yeah, you'll feel it,” Johnson said. “I feel fine as long I’m not running around.”
That, of course, is the crux of why Johnson retired in March of 2016 at the age of 30 with four years left on his contract. His body had started to break down.
“You love the game, but it's hard to do the things you do when you're feeling like you’re a leg down all the time, literally,” said Johnson, who battled finger, ankle and knee injuries in his final few NFL seasons. “Or you’re always beat up, even coming into the season. So it's just not as fun when you're down, and you got to work your way up. And you can't really get there because you're so beat up.”
Johnson said he misses “hanging around with the guys,” and people still ask him about returning to football “every time I see somebody in public.”
His response?
“It’s not happening,” Johnson said.
Instead, Johnson said he has put his business hat on and is working on a handful of projects in real estate and as a wide receiver consultant for players and teams (hence the upcoming visit to Oakland).
He said he’s not sure when the Lions will retire his jersey, and while he said he holds no animosity towards the team, his retirement is starting to resemble Barry Sanders’ departure from the game.
“I don’t even like to talk Lions too much just because the way our relationship ended,” Johnson said when asked about his No. 81 being retired. “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 is.”
Asked to explain how he was treated, Johnson declined to go into specifics.
“I mean, it’s simple,” he said. “It’s simple. It’s easy when you think about it.”
The Lions required Johnson to pay back part of the $16 million signing bonus he earned on the contract he signed in the spring of 2012.
NFL Players Association records showed Johnson paid the Lions $320,000 at the time of his retirement, or about 1/10th of the $3.2 million signing bonus proration they would have been entitled to under the league’s collective bargaining agreement.
The Lions pursued a similar payback when Sanders retired prematurely in 1999.
“They told me they wouldn’t trade me if I came back and stuff like that, but it wasn’t about that,” Johnson said. “It was about how I felt.”
How Johnson feels now is great. About retirement, about life, and about what’s next.
He said he’s done as a dancer, though his time last year on “Dancing With The Stars” -- he finished third -- gave him immense respect for that profession.
He has a charity bowling event planned for next month in Atlanta that will benefit pancreatic cancer research, another football camp around the same time -- his foundation always awards scholarships to graduating football players -- and in July he’s planning a refugee meal distribution as well.
“Retired life’s good, man,” Johnson said. “My schedule is freed up. It’s not entirely free because I’m doing a little work here and there independently, but it’s been good. I can’t complain. I’m spending time with my family, I’m going to move home soon, so it’s been good.”
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