By now, you have probably seen the NFL 100 commercial that aired during the Super Bowl in 2019. The commercial featured some of the NFL's all-time greats along with some of the best players currently in the league at a banquet that turned into a battle for a golden football.
One player in the commercial who was very familiar to Detroit Lions‘ fans was the great Barry Sanders.
According to the director and producer of the NFL 100 commercial, Peter Berg, stunt doubles were used throughout the commercial to prevent injuries to the former and current players.
But one player who refused to use a stunt double was Barry, who insisted on doing all of his own spin moves.
From NFL.com:
“What was funny is a lot of the players we're like, ‘I'll do my own hit, I'll do my own hit,'” Berg told Rapoport. “LaDainian Tomlinson actually did his own hit but he ran into stuntmen. … A lot of the football players wanted to do their own hits and then they saw the stuntmen doing them and they were like ‘Damn.'
As we all know, the best of Hollywood's best also include the stunt doubles who make unrealistic feats — including bone-jarring, table-smashing tackles in tuxedos — look real. Sometimes, even the pro football heroes should sit on the sideline.
“They're obviously very physical, tough guys, but we have stuntmen that are paid and are trained to do things like that. So we had so many stuntmen,” Berg told Rapoport. “They were amazing doubles. To see Ndamukong Suh standing next to his stunt double, who was the exact same size as him dressed exactly the same.
“Von Miller or Barry Sanders, who actually didn't use a stunt double. We were ready to go with Barry just because we weren't sure whether he wanted to make those spin moves and the cuts. He's like ‘I got this.' And he did. But we couldn't quite flatten Deion Sanders the way it looked in the show. So we used a lot of stunt doubles for the actual hits.”
We would expect nothing less from the GOAT!
