SALT LAKE CITY — Scott Mitchell sinks into the soft gray sectional at 1 a.m.
Hey look, Barry Sanders is on television. It’s a promo for “Bye Bye Barry,” a documentary that debuted on Amazon Prime one hour earlier.
Watching Sanders was always a thrill, even when he was a teammate. Sometimes Mitchell was criticized for doing just that rather than following through with his play fake after handing off. The way Sanders moved was mesmerizing, and Mitchell couldn’t help himself.
Now the 56-year-old has time to watch television at 1 a.m. A few weeks earlier, he was let go from his job as a sports talk radio host for KSL Newsradio, a job he held for seven years.
Mitchell finds “Bye Bye Barry.”
There’s Sanders saying the Lions might have won some playoff games if they hadn’t let go of some players, including Mitchell’s predecessor, Erik Kramer. There’s head coach Wayne Fontes telling Sanders, “We had every piece but the quarterback.” There’s Eminem saying the Lions could have won more if Sanders wasn’t a one-man team. There’s Jeff Daniels joining the chorus.
Mitchell isn’t attacked as much as dismissed.
He seethes, gets off the couch, makes his way to his iMac, logs on to Facebook and begins to type. As soon as he finishes, he thinks he should delete it.
What would he have done differently if he could go back in time?
He looks out the window. The sun shines. In the distance, the Wasatch mountains wear white caps.
“If I knew what I know now,” Mitchell says, pausing, “I would have stayed in Miami.”
That team for either no reason or terrible reasons lost two starting offensive guards Crockett and then later Reggie Brown. You can’t tell me if those guys stay they didn’t make a lot more noise in the playoffs
Yeah, this guy has been on the wrong side of so many morons blaming him or calling him a free agent failure. It’s the turd brains who know nothing about the Lions teams he played on. If i remember correctly Mitchell was part of the first offense in NFL history to have a QB throw for more than 4000 yards, two WR’s with over 1000 yards and a RB rush for over 1000 yards in the same season. That’s pretty special even today.
What happened after this was a management/leadership/ownership implosion. The Lions were the laughing stock of the NFL and pro sports really. All due to the complete ineptitude of those making the bigger decisions. There are many examples and too many to detail but it had zero to do with Mitchell.
So we are basing his Lions career on a playoff game loss?
I’d place more blame on the Lions coaching staff than Mitchell himself. They were out-coached to the point it was laughable. Mitchell executed the game plan he was prepared for which had worked all season. His OC failed to consider the scheme change Philly implemented and then could not adjust.
that’s how I feel about Stafford to—who had circus monkeys trying to run the team and they didn’t have a Clue, Matt’s play and numbers suffered for 12 years , and so did the teams -back then.
That offense wasn’t gimmicky at all. It’s the same offense that the Colts ran for years with Peyton Manning as their QB. The Lions just didn’t have Peyton to run their version of that offense
