Detroit Lions Award Winners: Barry Sanders Scampers for 4 Trophies

Barry Sanders has earned more National Football League awards than the rest of the Detroit Lions' offensive superstars combined. But in total, the standouts of Detroit's offense have won more NFL awards than the defense. Let's glance at the ledger of the NFL's most decorated Detroit Lions.

There will never be a running back with better moves than Barry Sanders. Sanders led the Detroit Lions to a National Football Conference playoff bid to claim the NFL's Most Valuable Player title in 1997, running the rock for a career-high 2,053 yards. Barry became just the third tailback in NFL history to surpass 2,000 yards in a single season as of the 1997 campaign, juking and jaunting for an astronomical 128.3 average rushing yards per contest.

Sanders, however, had to share the 1997 season's MVP award with Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre. That December's vote for Most Valuable Player ended in a tie, as 18 journalists voted for each athlete to receive the crown. Favre threw 35 TD passes for the 1998 Super Bowl runner-up Packers.

Sanders' elusiveness while running the ball stunned NFC North rivals long before the 5-foot-8 Wichita native was voted MVP. The Lions' tailback won NFL Offensive Player of the Year in 1994, rushing for 1,883 yards and catching 44 passes for 283 more to lead Detroit to a 9-7 record and the Lions' second consecutive playoff berth. Barry was bound and determined to protect the ball too, recording an amazing zero fumbles on 614 touches that season.

The Associated Press also voted Sanders the NFL Offensive Player of the Year in his MVP campaign of 1997.

NFL reporters were exceptionally fair after the 1967 season. Detroit struggled to a 5-7-2 record, and yet the Lions' rookies were celebrated with awards on both sides of the ball. Mel Farr was a catalyst for Motor City at running back until injuries began to slow the 6-foot-2 freight train in 1968 and 1969. His outstanding rookie season produced just six combined TDs in a stingy era of defense, but his 806 rushing yards in 12 games were a career high. 

Wide receiver Earl McCulloch was the next rookie on the Lions offense to wow the Associated Press. The Texas native, who nearly reached the Olympic Games as a hurdler, caught 40 passes for 680 yards while earning the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year award in a 4-8-2 campaign for Detroit. Sadly, McCulloch's trek was marred by injury even more than Farr's. Enduring three surgeries, McCulloch caught only 19 total TD passes in seven NFL seasons. 

Billy Sims is known as the man who recruited "Marvelous" Marcus Dupree to Sims' alma mater, the Oklahoma Sooners. But as a running back for the Detroit Lions, Sims took the league by surprise with a rookie campaign of 1980 that surpasses Sanders' iconic rookie year of 1989 in some respects. Sims ran for 1,303 yards and 13 touchdowns for the 1980 Detroit Lions, numbers that were exceeded by Sanders on the ground nine years later. In the passing game, however, the 1980s top overall draft pick was superior, catching 51 balls for 621 yards and three TDs before being named AP Offensive Rookie of the Year.

Sanders electrified the NFC in his first professional season, winning ROTY in the first step of what would become the greatest career of any Lion. His superb running talents took a long time to show up for Detroit in the win-loss column, though. The Detroit Lions endured a quarterback controversy and a 2-9 start to the season before winning their final five games of 1989, as late autumn's tired tacklers tried in vain to corral Detroit's sensational rookie. 

Lem Barney has not left the building. The Pro Football Hall of Fame was embarrassed recently when it erroneously announced that Barney had passed on at the age of 80. 

Not only is the former Detroit defensive back still with us, but he is also one of the greatest living legends of the Lions' defense. Barney won the AP Defensive Rookie of the Year award with a showy performance in 1967, foiling opposing quarterbacks and streaking up the field with 10 interceptions for 238 return yards and three pick-six touchdowns. Barney played 11 NFL seasons, all of them with the Detroit Lions, tallying 10 touchdowns as a DB and a kick returner. 

Al "Bubba" Baker won the Lions' second straight AP Defensive Rookie of the Year honor by casting an anchor in the middle of Detroit's defense. The 280-pound defensive lineman out of Colorado State won the crown with an average of 12 tackles per game and four forced fumbles in his rookie year. Baker reached the Pro Bowl in his first three of five total seasons in Detroit, going on to play for St. Louis, Cleveland, and Minnesota in a 13-year NFL career. 

Nadamukong Suh made 2010 feel like the late 1960s, when Baker and Alex Karras lined the Lions' defensive front. Suh became an NFL All-Pro in only his rookie year, notching 66 combined tackles and 10 devastating sacks from the interior line. Suh's first-year heroics, like Sanders' and Farr's, did little to turn the Lions' overall fortunes around. But with Suh dominant between the hashes, Detroit's 2011 team won double-digit games for the first time since 1995. 

Suh's award as the league's defensive ROTY was the Lions' first such individual honor of the new century, and for the time being, their only one.