Thanksgiving NFL etc. open thread

Happy spaghetti carbonara day! Since Detroit Lions football is on tap and this is actually an attractive prospect, I will also note that the new Amazon/NFL Films documentary about Barry Sanders is very good:

There are moments — a whole lot of moments, really — in the new documentary about Barry Sanders where you can’t quite believe what you’re seeing is real, archival video and not a CGI creation. Sanders moves like an acrobat, pivots like a ballerina, hammers like a cannonball, all on the same play. Watching his unique combination of power and grace is as breathtaking now as it was back then — maybe more so, because those of us who watched it live didn’t quite realize at the time how rare and lucky we were to be living at the same time as Barry Sanders.

For all the mystery that surrounded Sanders — How could he move like that? Why was he so averse to individual glory? How could the gods be so cruel to put him in Detroit? — the overriding question, then and now, is: Why did Barry Sanders walk away from the NFL? Why leave when he was approaching the pinnacle, not just of his own career, but of NFL history?

“Bye Bye Barry,” a new documentary out this week from Prime Video, attempts to answer that question by asking it — once again — of the man of mystery himself. A production of NFL Films, “Bye Bye Barry” was made in conjunction with its subject. But unlike, say, “The Last Dance,” you don’t get the sense that Sanders is shaping a narrative to make himself look better … mainly because Sanders is, and always has been, just fine with whatever people think of him at any time.

He left on his own terms, and you have to respect that.