Former Detroit Lions quarterback Scott Mitchell claps back at critics of his play during run with Barry Sanders.
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00:00 Former Detroit Lions quarterback Scott Mitchell has come out this week and made some comments
00:04 expressing his frustration about the team's struggles in the past. Here today to break
00:08 that down is SIL Alliance John Macroom. John, give me your thoughts and take on what you make
00:14 of Mitchell's comments. Yeah, Cam, and real interesting, obviously surrounding the release
00:19 of the Bye Bye Barry documentary. Barry Sanders had his career featured and obviously you're going
00:24 to have to go back and revisit some of the struggles of the Detroit Lions. And look,
00:29 it was pretty clear, it was laid out. Many people believe that Barry Sanders grew frustrated over
00:34 the time, over his 10-year period with the Lions. From year five on, some things started to happen
00:40 that clearly frustrated Barry Sanders. Obviously, Cameron, every competitor wants to win. But at
00:45 that time, Scott Mitchell earned a very high lucrative contract to come from the Dolphins
00:51 to join the Lions. Well, when that happened, when it was time to pay the supporters of Barry Sanders,
00:57 like the offensive line, like Lomas Brown, like Kevin Glover, a leader like Chris Spielman,
01:03 the Lions unfortunately decided to allocate dollars differently. And so Barry Sanders
01:08 grew frustrated. And there's a poignant scene in the documentary where the coach at the time,
01:14 Wayne Fonse, comes out and says, "Barry, we could have won if we had the quarterback." Well,
01:19 Scott Mitchell took offense to that. He's like, "I'm the quarterback, you paid me money." And he
01:22 felt like, "You know what? I need to defend myself from this narrative that has lasted for 20 years."
01:28 And he said, "You know what? As a football team, we had an opportunity to win. And as a football
01:34 team, you win and lose as a group." He even called out Barry Sanders and said, "Look, during the
01:39 times when we made the playoffs, Barry didn't shine in the playoffs." So I look at it and I
01:44 said, "You know what? Good for Scott Mitchell." He defended himself and he talked about some of
01:48 the deep-seated issues. He said that, "Look, we had an offense that started to kind of grow with
01:54 Tom Moore as the offensive coordinator. If we had been given more time, if Wayne Fonse hadn't been
01:59 fired, Tom Moore then goes on to the Colts and he develops that offense over time with Peyton
02:05 Manning. And he got that time and he eventually won." So Scott Mitchell was saying, he said he
02:10 truly believes that if Tom Moore and Wayne Fonse and everybody stayed together and were given more
02:15 time, that the Lions football team would have grown together and eventually won more games.
02:20 So he felt like he didn't want to shoulder the entire blame. But if you go back and look at
02:25 history, Scott Mitchell needs to take a little bit of the blame as well. He threw a lot of
02:29 interceptions in key games and he struggled. He didn't live up to his contract, but I do think
02:33 it's a little bit of piling on for a player when you look at the fact that it's a team game. And
02:39 for the Detroit Lions, the reasons why they struggled were not the fault of just one person,
02:44 but the quarterback is always going to take a lot of blame in the National Football League,
02:48 especially when you're making that much money. I thought the Barry Sanders documentary is worth
02:53 the watch, but good for Scott Mitchell. He should defend himself. But at the same time,
02:57 he also was a part of the reason why the team struggled back in the day. All in all, Barry
03:03 Sanders, I thought the documentary came out well, but Scott Mitchell ended up looking like the
03:08 scapegoat in a tough situation. John, very interesting stuff. Thanks for all the insight.