Local children ask NFL Hall of Famer Calvin Johnson hard-hitting questions

WARREN — Detroit Lions legend and Pro Football League Hall of Famer Calvin Johnson Jr. made his way through the Warren community the past two days.

On Oct. 8, Johnson visited Warren Cousino High School to speak with the freshman, junior varsity and varsity football teams as part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Heart of a Hall of Famer series. The visit also validated almost decadelong rumors of Johnson potentially going to the Patriots.

The 2024 “Pride of the Lions” inductee then took to an even younger audience Oct. 9 at Gardner White’s Warren location, 6500 E. 14 Mile Road, hosting his “Bedtime Stories” event. Gardner White was named the official furniture and mattress store of the Detroit Lions and hosted the event in conjunction with the Calvin Johnson Jr. Foundation and American Cancer Society.

Johnson was greeted by a lively crowd of children and their parents and kicked right into gear, reading “Bunnies on the Go: Getting from Place to Place” and “All Through the Night: Important Jobs That Get Done at Night.”

Johnson took a crowd vote on which book should kick off the night, and the bunnies were victorious.

After the readings, Johnson took a few minutes to conduct a Q&A with his youthful audience, who came prepared to ask the six-time Pro Bowler some questions:

 

Q. Do you know how many touchdowns you scored in your whole career?

A. Eighty-three. I got robbed of a couple, but 83.

 

Q. Who is the toughest cornerback you ever went up against?

A. I’ll give you two names. Al Harris, he was the first one. Patrick Peterson was the second.

 

Q. Who is the toughest team you ever went against?

A. That’s tough. You know what’s tough? It’s really tough playing when it’s really cold outside because your fingers and feet hurt. When we’re playing in Green Bay and it’s zero degrees outside, that’s pretty tough.

 

Q. How hard does Jared Goff throw the ball?

A. Quarterbacks can throw the ball really hard. You see my finger here? See how that finger here is messed up and a little shorter, that’s how hard they throw. They mess up your fingers.

 

Q. How many receiving yards did you have in your career?

A. Eleven thousand and something, I forget exactly how much it was (11,619).

 

Q. How fast could you run?

A. When I was running at my peak, I was running a 4.35 if that means anything to you.

 

Q. Why do they call you “Megatron”?

A. They call me “Megatron” because when I was first playing football in 2007, that’s when the “Transformers” movie came out. Everybody just started calling me “Megatron” and it caught on.

 

Q. How many points did you have?

A. I guess you would have to multiply 83 by six. I can’t do that off the top of my head. (According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and pro-football-reference.com, Johnson had 508 career points. He had one rushing touchdown and two two-point conversions in addition to his 83 receiving touchdowns.)

 

Q. That call you got when they put you in the (Pro Football) Hall of Fame, what was that feeling like? (A father asked this question.)

A. That was a rush of emotions. You think about all the things you did in your career. It was just a rush of all my teammates, all the experiences, and all the different emotions I had from 0-16 to when we made the playoffs. It was all that in one moment. It was a happy moment to say the least.

 

Q. Did you play with Barry Sanders?

A. I did not play with Barry Sanders. I really wish I did, but he was a little bit older than me. It would’ve been very cool to play with Barry.

 

Q. Who is your favorite Lions player right now?

A. That’s tough. I love Jared (Goff). He’s a solid dude. I love Amon-Ra (St. Brown). There’s so many guys on the team, but those are my top two.