I’m one of those people that needs the TV on while I go through the process of falling asleep. Some do the white noise thing or music and then there’s the even weirder people who just fall asleep during silence. It’s TV for me.
I put on the Heisman 1997 30 for 30 documentary. It was pretty good for what it’s worth. I found myself a little more interested in the guys that were outside the top four in voting. I totally forgot about Penn State running back Curtis Ennis. That guy was good.
This of course led me down the rabbit hole of facts and I was interested to see how many Lions players have won the award. The answer is 12. Here they are:
- 1942: Frank Sinkwich
- 1948: Doak Walker
- 1949: Leon Hart
- 1955: Howard Cassady
- 1969: Steve Owens
- 1978: Billy Sims
- 1988: Barry Sanders
- 1989: Andre Ware
- 1990: Ty Detmer
- 1991: Desmond Howard
- 1992: Gino Toretta
- 2005: Reggie Bush
The ones I really want you to focus on are Sanders, Ware, Detmer, Howard and Toretta. Notice anything there? They all won the award over the course of five years. All those guys wound up in Detroit at some point. It’s not the craziest stat you’ve ever seen, but it’s still weird. Maybe some of you already knew, but I did not and was blown away by this Wednesday night.
Barry Sanders is obviously one of the greatest players to ever play the game. He’s a Hall of Famer and we don’t need to talk to much about him. Let’s talk a little about the others and their time in Detroit.
The Lions took Andre Ware with the seventh pick in the 1990 NFL Draft and he unfortunately is now know as one of the Lions biggest draft busts of all time. He played 14 games over the course of four seasons in Detroit and started just six of them. He was pretty bad in all of them.
Ty Detmer got picked in the ninth-round by the Packers in the 1992 NFL Draft. He bounced around a lot before landing with the Lions in 2001. Detmer is known for one thing in Detroit and that’s throwing seven interceptions in one game against the Browns. To this day that is the second most interceptions thrown in a game by one quarterback.
Desmond Howard was a great player for years. He was an All-Pro and even won Super Bowl MVP. He is responsible for me getting yelled at in gym glass because I decided to do the robot after scoring a goal in crab walk soccer instead of getting back on defense. Thanks Desmond.