Lions" Calvin Johnson Defies Description From the beginning it was clear that the name Calvin Johnson would not be sufficient. Any player as big, as fast and as talented as Johnson, the superb wide receiver for the Detroit Lions, would need a nickname more befitting his talents. His teammate Roy Williams called him Megatron during Johnson's rookie year in 2007 and it stuck. But in the midst of a season in which he is threatening to break Jerry Rice's record for receiving yards, it is worth wondering if the nickname fits. The biggest issue with the name, it would seem, is that Megatron, the Transformers character, was a bad guy. The nemesis of Optimus Prime and the Autobots, Megatron ran the Decepticons, a group bent on domination of the universe. His powers were vast and included, in some tellings, the ability to transform into a Walther P-38, shoot lasers from his eyes and reprogram computers with a port in the side of his head. But time and again, Prime and his human friends thwarted Megatron's plans. Johnson, on the other hand, is the answer to the question of what you would have if you took Terrell Owens and removed the drama. The rare instance of a superstar wide receiver who is more famous for his actions on the field than anything he has said off it, he has been a model citizen for his entire career. All of Johnson's talents were on display in Sunday's loss to the Indianapolis Colts, and while no lasers were fired out of his eyes, he came awfully close. He ran short routes and showed off his hands and his ability to get open. He went over the middle, showing off his tight-end-like physique. In the second quarter he was positively Rice-like, catching a ball one-handed over his shoulder in the middle of coverage for a 32-yard gain. And in the third quarter he outraced Vontae Davis, the Colts cornerback who ran a 4.4 40-yard dash at the scouting combine in 2009, stretching for the ball and rolling over his shoulder into the end zone for a 46-yard touchdown. In all, he had a career-high 13 catches for 171 yards. It was his fifth consecutive game with more than 125 receiving yards, which matched an N.F.L. record set in 1966 by Pat Studstill, the former Lion, and it put him on pace for 1,904 yards on the season, which would top Rice's record of 1,848 set in 1995. And in a theme fitting with his career thus far, and possibly proving the Megatron name is appropriate, his efforts were wasted as the Lions fell to the Optimus Prime-like Andrew Luck and his human companions. Johnson's Lions are 14-14 over the last two seasons as he has gone from good to great. The progress for Detroit may not seem apparent, but in his second and third seasons, the Lions went 2-30 and were outscored by 481 points, so they were starting from a position of remarkable weakness. Even as his team has gone from terrible to mediocre, it is hard to not lump Johnson in with players famous for being great despite the teams they played for. It is a fraternity that includes players like O. J. Simpson and Steve Largent, and ones more recent like Maurice Jones-Drew. But there is likely no better example than a player that wore the same blue and silver uniform as Johnson: Barry Sanders. Sanders had the same ability as Johnson to make his team's result nearly irrelevant. The talk the next day would not be that the Bears or the Packers beat the Lions, but rather the spin move by Sanders that left two defenders flailing. The modern phenomenon in which a player's talents are doubted should he fail to win a championship did not apply to Sanders. Instead, when he retired, giving up on his chance to break Walter Payton's record for career rushing yards, he left an impossible situation for Emmitt Smith, who eventually did break the record, because he will always have Sanders lingering over him as the player who could have done more. Johnson has that similar quality. There will be no asterisks even if he never wins a title. There will be no blame, or wondering what could have been. Each and every week, fans tune in to see him do something special, and more often than not he delivers. Even Jim Schwartz, the Lions" head coach, knew he had seen something special in Johnson's performance on Sunday, and was able to show some levity in the face of defeat. "Calvin Johnson is always a bright spot," Schwartz told reporters after the game. Maybe I should have had him on defense for the last play. In the old Transformers cartoons, fans expected Optimus Prime to win in every episode. But plenty of those fans were more interested in seeing what Megatron would have in store for him. So maybe, despite not having similarly evil intentions, Johnson is not all that different from the Decepticon leader after all.