Bubba Baker
The star of the Silver Rush defense of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Baker would have considerably more national acclaim if sacks were kept as an official statistic before 1982. Baker won the Defensive Rookie of the Year award in 1978 thanks to an unofficial 23 sacks, still the team record and what would have been an NFL record.
Baker was a first-team All-Pro as a rookie and made the Pro Bowl in each of his first three seasons. He only played two more in Detroit before leaving for several other teams in a long and consistently good career, but his best years were his first ones in Detroit. Unofficially he notched 75.5 sacks in five years with the Lions, according to team records.