'Explain my ink' will be an occasional series where Detroit Lions players discuss their favorite tattoos and what those tattoos mean to them. This is the first in the series.

ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- It started because of his father.

Rob Sims felt he needed to do something to carry on the legacy of his family so he went to a tattoo parlor in Canton, Ohio, and asked for a suggestion on what the potential ink would look like. Sims had the idea -- he wanted his family name scrawled across the top of his back.

He just needed to get the actual drawing done. He doesn’t remember the guy who drew up the tattoo, but he liked the design and the size of it so he had it done. It was the second tattoo he got and the most important one to him.

“I’ve got a big back,” Sims said. “It would look kind of crazy with a little Sims back there, you know. I wanted something big and different and flashy. Guys have back tattoos but not in this ink, and it’s an original.”

Sims has three tattoos on his body, but that one has the most significance because of his father, former NFL lineman Mickey Sims, who died in 2006 at age 51 and never saw Sims play a game. This is why the tattoo is on his back.

He is carrying the legacy of his father and the importance of his name, legitimately, on his back.

“That was kind of the thing,” Sims said. “Growing up, my thing was, everything to me was my dad, [he] made it to the league but made some mistakes. It was always, ‘You’re going to be the one who makes it and plays for a long time.’

“I kind of always took it like I carry my name on our back. I got to right his wrongs, my wrongs, all that. That’s kind of where it all comes from.”

It is one of two tattoos carrying significance for Sims.

With his name on his back, he has one on his left bicep and shoulder reading ‘Adding Fuel To My Fire.’ The two dates listed underneath the tattoo ‘6/7/06’ and ‘9/11/08'. The dates are of his father’s death and of his surgery on his pec.

They motivate him. And eventually he will get other dates there, too, more positive ones like his anniversary and the dates his children were born listed down his forearm. But it hasn’t happened yet.

“I just get lazy,” Sims said. “My wife is kind of pissed about that sometimes, like are you ever going to get that filled in?

“I’m just like when I’m in the mood.”