Lions great Sanders 'had everything you wanted'

Those who saw him play recall Charlie Sanders' trademark moments. How, for instance, he would leap and stretch and snare passes a nanosecond before he crashed to Tiger Stadium's turf, sod flying as his shoulder pad plowed a dirt furrow during one more NFL Sunday afternoon in Detroit.

They might have seen him a snap earlier rock Bears linebacker Dick Butkus' fillings with a crack-back block in an era when NFL rules were more lenient and, one might say, more primitive.

They remember him shaking tacklers and thundering for extra yards. Or, chipping a linebacker ahead of a 10-yard route and third-down grab that left a defensive back demoralized and a Lions drive intact.

All are vivid snapshots from the Hall of Fame career of a Lions tight end who died Thursday at age 68, of cancer, at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.

Former teammates Mel Farr and Lem Barney were at the hospital when Sanders died about 1 p.m.

"Charlie was such a strong guy, he didn't want to leave in front of us," said Farr, a running back during the Sanders era.

He and Barney, another Sanders teammate, and a cornerback who would join Sanders in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, had arrived Thursday knowing their friend of nearly 50 years was near death.

"Everybody left the room for a few minutes, just for a break ...," Farr said. "Five, 10 minutes later a nurse came down and said, 'Charlie's gone.'

"That was Charlie. He wanted everyone else to feel good as he transitioned. He did it his way."

Sanders was a native of North Carolina who arrived in Detroit in 1968 as a third-round pick from Minnesota. He was 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, and a player of such skill and fury he would, alongside his Hall of Fame induction in 2007, be named to the NFL's all-decade team from the 1970s.

Sanders retired after the 1977 season, having caught 336 passes during a career that saw him elected to seven Pro Bowls, and in 2008 be named to the Lions all-time team.

"He had everything you wanted in a football player," said Joe Schmidt, the great Lions linebacker who was Sanders' coach from 1968-72. "He was such a tough guy, with size, speed, intelligence. He knew how to run pass patterns. He was a guy who in this game doesn't come around very often."

Greg Landry arrived in that class of 1968, a year after Barney had begun his Canton-bound career. Landry was the team's first-round pick and a quarterback from Massachusetts.

"We first met in Chicago at the College All-Star Game," Landry recalled during a Thursday conversation. "We played in that game together and, then, after the game, I said, 'Hey, Charlie, you've got a car — I need a ride to Cranbrook' (the Lions training site in the 1960s).

"So he gave me a ride and not long after I jumped in he said, 'You're the first-round draft pick and I'm third-round and I'm the one who has a car?'

"And that's how we started our relationship. What a great guy. And what a player. He had such tremendous concentration on the field. He'd concentrate so much that he'd extend his body, almost parallel to the ground, and make so many catches. He'd bang into the ground and hang on to the ball. He just excelled at that."

Sanders had knee injuries that eventually ended his career and led to knee replacements. But he was not finished with football — or the Lions.

He joined Wayne Fontes staff in 1989 as tight ends coach, and in 1991 began overseeing wide receivers as the run 'n shoot offense came to Detroit.

It was a flamboyant attack that in 1995 saw Herman Moore and Brett Perriman become the first NFL teammates to each catch 100 or more passes in the same season.

"The central thing he could do was communicate the situation, clearly," Perriman said Thursday, speaking from his home in Alpharetta, Ga. "We knew the Xs and Os, but he just had this ability to make everything so simple.

"He taught me as a young man, and molded me into a grown man. He got myself together in terms of attitude and learning how to persevere."

Sanders departed when Fontes was fired, but rejoined the team in 1998 as an NFL scout. In 2000, he was promoted to assistant director of pro personnel, a title he held at the time of his death, some eight months after his cancer battle began.

His personality and skill at talking football, in smooth and understandable ways, were so well-regarded by the Lions he found his way into the play-by-play booth during the 1980s and again in 1997. He also contributed to the Lions exhibition TV broadcasts and was a fixture on the team's weekly television show.

His later-life pursuits, however, increasingly turned toward charity work: "Have A Heart Save A Life Program" and charity golf tournament; Charlie Sanders Scholarship Foundation; and ongoing work for Detroit Lions Charities.

Sanders is survived by a daughter and a son, as well as by his his former wife, Georgianna, and their eight children. He was preceded in death by a daughter, Nathalie.

Funeral services had not been finalized as of Thursday evening as Farr and Barney and teammates and friends began to prepare for a final farewell.

"To see he's not in pain anymore is a blessing," Farr said. "Finally, Charlie doesn't have to deal with the pain."

lynn.henning@detroitnews.com

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