Calvin Johnson Said He'll Squash His Beef With The Lions If They Pay Him $1.6 Million

quote:

---

The Lions and Calvin Johnson continue to have no relationship. The rift traces to the fact that, when Johnson retired, the Lions made him pay back some of his signing-bonus money. Johnson recently elaborated on his concerns in an interview with Graham Bensinger.

“What do you make of their efforts to resolve it?” Bensinger asked Johnson. “Not really an effort,” Johnson said.

So what needs to happen? “I’m not saying they got to repay me the $1.6 [million] all up front, but they need to figure out a way to do it, and not have me work for it, because I already did the work for it.”

The Lions recently offered to pay Johnson $500,000 per year for three years, if he worked 28 hours per year. They also offered to make a $100,000 donation to a charity of Johnson’s choice, pushing the total payout to $1.6 million. Johnson declined.

“That’s a joke,” Johnson told Bensinger. “I put it like this. Imagine you had a friend — well, maybe not even a friend, just somebody. They gave you something and then they take it back. And then are y’all gonna still really hang out? Are y’all still cool? And imagine you did a whole bunch of work for it, too. It’s the principle. It’s the principle of it. You cannot have me back unless you put that money back in my pocket. . . . I’m not working for it.”

Technically, Johnson hadn’t earned the money. He received it as an advance on future services. That said, the Lions shouldn’t have asked for it back. They needed him off the books for cap reasons, and if he hadn’t retired they likely would have cut him. (Frankly, his agents screwed this up by not brokering a better deal when Johnson willingly walked away, allowing the team to dump most of his bloated cap number for the 2016 season.)

---

Loading Twitter Embed....

Loading Twitter Embed....