How the NFL draft works and in fact all major sports in the United States is, the worst teams the year before are the ones that pick first, and unfortunately this means that some of the greatest athletes in college are forced to play for the worst teams. This has been true of Sequon Barkley of the Giants who has had a career in the NFL far less than it should have been, only because he was so good at Penn State he was was one of the first players picked in the NFL draft, eventually picked by the Giants, who have frequently had very bad offensive lines.
When a running back in professional football does not have an effective offensive line, he will not gain the yards or have the huge breakout runs required for a great NFL career. This is the number one problem when a great running back in college is drafted high in the NFL draft to a bad team. Sequon Barkley’s idol is Barry Sanders who during his career with the Detroit Lions that ran from 1989-1998, somehow was able to be a great running back with one of the worst teams in NFL history – and average 5.0 yards a carry totaling 15,269 yards, currently 4th all time. Sanders was another victim of being a very high draft pick and mired on a bad team for his whole career. Despite this, Sanders 5.0 average per carry is second only to Jim Brown who at 5.2 yards per carry with the Cleveland Browns was on a very good or great team during his entire career.
What is most amazing about the new Amazon Prime documentary, “Bye Bye Barry” is that Barry Sanders retired from the NFL in 1999 and it has taken 24 years to produce a sports documentary about someone who is arguably the greatest athlete in the history of the NFL. The best part of this documentary is the many highlights of Sanders’s best breakaway runs – some of the very best in NFL history. There are also many scenes showing the relationship between Sanders and his father William Sanders, who for the most part was not a good person. William would frequently say to Barry that he was the 3rd best running back after Jim Brown and himself, even though William never played in the NFL.
This documentary also includes many celebrities who are all huge fans of Barry Sanders. Including, Jeff Daniels, Tim Allen, Eminem, Rodney Peete, Emmitt Smith, Dan Patrick, Bill Belichick and Jalen Rose. Knowing that Barry Sanders has so many famous fans, 24 years after he retired, is another tribute to his greatness.
Barry Sanders's career in college at Oklahoma State, especially his junior year before he went into the NFL will probably never be broken. In 1988, Sanders ran for 2628 yards, with a 7.6 yards per carry average, and scored 37 touchdowns in only 11 games, en route to the Highsman Trophy. Numbers that nobody who follows college Football thought would be ever achieved.
The all-time rushing leader in NFL history was Emmett Smith who played for the Dallas Cowboys and the Arizona Cardinals for a total of 15 years and 18,355 yards with a 4.2 yards per carry average. Even Emmett Smith admits that Barry Sanders is the best running back in the history of the NFL. It has been speculated that if Sanders played for the Dallas Cowboys, rather than the Detroit Lions he would have run for over 20,000 yards at over 6.0 yards per carry. Records that might never have been broken. For me, the best thing about Barry Sanders was his humbleness and his class. Every time he scored he never celebrated, he never spiked the ball. He just walked over to the referee and handed him the football. No player in the NFL has ever shown the level of class and professionalism that Barry Sanders did.
The documentary Bye Bye Barry is also about Barry Sanders’s decision to retire from the NFL in 1999. After the Lions mismanaged the team for years, letting go of some of the best players, and in the 1998 season, Sanders had an average (for him) record of 1491 yards and only 4.3 yards a carry, he decided to retire at only age of 31. For some time after Sanders retired, he was one of the most hated athletes in NFL history. Fans in Detroit could not understand why after 9 years Sanders had enough of losing and never getting the blocking he needed to gain the yards he wanted to gain to remain at the top of the NFL. Days before he retired from the NFL, Sanders traveled to London and then faxed his resignation to the Detroit Lions. Despite his greatness as an NFL running back, Sanders had enough of football and just like he always did, just handed the football to someone else, and walked away.
The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this documentary are a correct and perfect score of 100%. I agree with this rating and give this great sports documentary the highest recomendation.
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