Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: A look back at Chris Johnson

Episode Date: May 22, 2018

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Welcome in to another edition of Locked on Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined as always by Terry Lambert. Terry, how are you tonight? Doing pretty good. What's up, man? Not too much. So we're going to have a little chat about Chris Johnson tonight, so that should be fun. Had some interaction with that on Twitter earlier today,

so we'll touch on a little bit of that as well. Before we jump into that, remind you to write for me at CMiracles.com, covering the Titans for SB Nation, so you can find us there. On Twitter, I'm at jmorrismcm. Terry is at tlambertfb. The podcast account, at LockedOnTitans. So you can follow us all those places.

You can subscribe to the podcast, LockedOnTitans, on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you get podcasts, you can find us there. All right, so we're in this you know slow period of the offseason the Titans did start OTAs today Monday and they were I guess on the field today but there were no media reports I don't know how much of the work they're going to be doing is going to be available to the media I know some of this week is so we'll have some stuff to talk about from that stuff at some point during this week so we'll kind of take a break from looking back at these guys um and you know touch on that

news when it happens but nothing like that today so we figured it'd be a good time to look back at the career of chris johnson and we've been talking for a little bit before we jumped on here just about our memories. But I think it makes sense to start with that draft. And it was an interesting thing because, you know, the Titans were coming off of a year where they had made the playoffs. They were 10-6. It was Bench Young's second year. The season before, they drafted Chris Johnson. And the one thing that we thought that we knew they needed was a receiver. Go back and look at some of the names of the receivers on that roster,

and it was just a crap show, really, which has been for the majority of the time the Titans have been here. But the year before, they drafted Lindell White in the second round, so we were all pretty sure that the one position they weren't going to draft was a receiver, I mean was a running back. And then Chris Johnson's the pick. And there was part of us, I think, that at the time, or at least I can speak for myself, at the time their reaction was, oh, great, another workout warrior, you know,

a guy that had put up these elite numbers at the combine, obviously. I mean, he broke the 40-yard dash time at the combine. But, you know, why are we drafting this guy? We don't need a running back. All that kind of stuff was kind of the first thoughts that were going through my head. Terry, you remember what your initial reaction was to the pick? I was mad. I was upset.

You look at the receivers, 2007, the Titans had Roy Doe Williams, Brandon Jones, Justin Gage, Eric Moultz. That was the receiving core. So the need to me was pretty obvious. And looking back, of course, this receiver class in this year was not very good. But I remember Devin Thomas out of Michigan State, Lama Swede, Deshaun Jackson, all those guys were in the conversation for the Titans who picked at 24. So to see them take a running back was maddening to me. You know, we talked about it a couple months ago, having receiver fatigue.

We just needed one for so long. And I guess that was kind of the early stages of that. But to not get one right there when so many were on the board and ready to go right there was frustrating. But, you know, now looking back, Wendell White was on the roster. It was Chris Brown after that and then Chris Henry. Yeah. So, you know, you just look at that skill position there.

Wendell White, Chris Brown, Chris Henry, Rodale Williams, Brandon Jones, Justin Gage. That's your skill position. So looking back, I understand it. The Titans needed some speed. They needed a guy that could change the game, that could break things open. They certainly got it as it turned turned out, in Chris Johnson.

Sure, and yeah, I mean, I'd forgotten about Chris Brown, and I did have some good games, but he always hurt his hamstring. He was, I don't know, he missed a million games with that. And I think we probably all at that point maybe thought Lindell White was the answer. And I think part of that was just coming off of the hype of him at USC and, you know, the second-round pick and Norm Chow. I mean, there were just so many things that seemed to be working in Lindell. Coming off a 1,000-yard year for the Titans.

Right. 1,100 yards and seven touchdowns. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, well, they don't need a running back, right? But, yeah, so, you know, obviously, like you said, I mean, it turned out to be the best pick of kind of what we were expecting there, you know, that he worked out better than any of those receivers did. And so, I mean, it didn't really take long to see, you know,

what they had in Chris Johnson. And, again, you know, there was some talk of, at least in my thought, was, oh, this guy's not going to be able to play play and I think part of that was being burned with the Chris Henry pick before that you know not not long before that um just you know with his combine numbers but Chris Johnson had production in college whereas Chris Henry didn't now you know Chris Johnson went to East Carolina so it's a little bit different but at least you could see I mean you go back and watch some of his college highlight tapes and running by guys, running the ball, catching the ball, special teams. I mean, he did a lot of special stuff.

But, you know, in that first year, he split time with Lindell White. That was when the whole smash and dash thing, you know, came out with those two guys. And I just remember it was, I mean, I don't know, they were fun to watch. And that team ended up in 2008 being a whole lot better than I think any of us expected them to be. And now, you know, just kind of setting the stage for that team, I mean, that was the one where you had, you know,

Vince Young and Kerry Collins. Obviously it was, what, Vince's third year at that point. And, you know, we're coming off of a 10-6. There was a game at home where Vince Young, you know, hurt his knee during the game. The trainer said he was good enough to go back in. Fish told him to go back in. He refused to go in because he was getting booed.

And so, Kerry Collins took over. And, you know, Vince Young didn't start another game until you know the seventh game of the of the following season of the 2009 season but they had a lot of that going on but you had you had an unbelievable defense you had an unbelievable offensive line and then you had these these two running backs Chris Johnson and Lindell White and they just carry this offense like you I mean you mentioned the guys that were their I mean, not exactly the who's who there. And so, I mean, you know, there are a bunch of special games. I think the one that probably stands out to me the most

and the one that people mentioned on Twitter earlier today was the game against the Chiefs in October of that year where he had, I think, 168 yards on 18 carries. He had that long touchdown run where he's watching the guys chasing him in the jumbotron, and he gets up and plays the bongo drums on the bus, so hard for me to say, after that. And from there, it was just Chris Johnson mania kind of took over. And so you had that team that was special. They had a special defense with that defensive line, Hainsworth, Vanden Bosch, those guys.

You still had Keith Bullock. You had Cortland Finnegan. I mean, the defense was unbelievable. But Chris Johnson gave them something on offense that they hadn't had the year before when they were 10-6. And, you know, he is what carried that offense because, listen, Kerry Collins was a perfectly good game manager. But without Chris Johnson, even as good as that defense was, that team

doesn't go 13-3 and get a first-round playoff spot. Yeah, I remember the, I think it was the first preseason game. Chris Johnson was in Nashville against the Rams, and it might have been, it was one of his first carries, it might have been the first. But anyways, a defensive end comes off the edge and meets him in the backfield. And he kind of like ducks under him and avoids him and then avoids the linebacker. And then explodes,

runs by a corner, and then runs by a safety. And that's when you kind of knew. You saw Jeff Fisher and Mike Heimerdinger high-fiving, fist-bumping on the sidelines. So you knew you had something special there. So excitement built from there.

But Johnson as a runner was just, he was really unique. I don't know that there's anyone like him in today's game. He was really small. That was one of the knocks on him coming out, 190 pounds, and he's going to carry the load in the NFL. You just don't see that in today's game very often. But he was strong. He was never hurt, and that was what we were talking about before we came on. He put together six or seven 16-game seasons in Nashville, which is just unheard of.

But his ability to get through the line of scrimmage, to turn on the afterburners, made him really special. But getting through the cuts without losing speed, he's kind of deceptive. It wasn't really shifty. I don't know. He's a hard player to describe, but a really unique talent, a talent that we might

not ever see again in the league. Yeah, like you said, shifty's not a word that comes to mind when you think of Chris Johnson, but it's that straight line speed and the ability to make cuts at full speed, make guys miss. Early on in his career, you can go back and watch him.

He ran over some guys. I mean, he would meet guys in the hole and kind of blow them up. And then, you know, obviously once he got into the secondary, he was gone. So, yeah, the only game he ever got hurt in was the 2009 playoff game against the Ravens. And, you know, I think people that have followed the blog have, you know, heard my take on that before. I really feel like he could have come back into that game, but he didn't.

Had a high-angle sprain, allegedly. And, you know, the Titans ended up losing that game. You know, they could have won it without him. I mean, you know, if you've been a Titans fan long enough, in the circumstances of that game, you've got the Lindell White fumble. You've got the Algie Crumpler fumble. You've got the fourth down completion of the Todd Heap that was five seconds after the play clock had run out um just all that stuff that that happened in that game and just you know kind of the the the way things

go when the titans play the ravens in nashville in the playoffs so um you know no no no reason to necessarily revisit all of that now so, so that was his rookie season. The 2009 season is obviously the one that is, you know, the most remembered of his career and obviously the best, I mean, quite possibly the best season ever compiled by a running back in the NFL. You know, when he rushed for 2,006 yards, more than 2,100 yards from scrimmage. And just, I mean, you can just go through game after game after game in that season

where he just did some unbelievable things. You know, three carries, three touchdown runs longer than 80 yards. Nobody else has ever done that. He's done it twice in two different seasons. And just, you know, that team was terrible at the beginning of the year. They started out 0-6. That was the whole, you know, Jeff Fisher took off the shirt and had a Peyton Manning jersey and then they ended up winning the next six to get to six and six and then you know weren't able to make the playoffs but you know just that next year I mean it just seemed like

Chris Johnson nobody could stop him and we were were talking before, I mean, I remember the game after the bye against the Jaguars here where him and Maurice Jones-Drew went back and forth. And Maurice Jones-Drew had a couple of, like, 80-plus-yard touchdown runs. Chris Johnson had two really long runs. Had, like, 240-something yards in that game. But that season there was the 50-yard-plus touchdown pass against the Texans where he walked up and nobody covered him. Kerry Collins just stood up and threw him the ball, and he just ran.

Obviously, nobody was going to catch him. But I don't know. The things that he was able to do in that season, and you knew the last couple of games of the year, they had been eliminated from the playoffs, and so you could tell that the mission of the team was to get him to 2,000 yards, and you can understand that. I mean, in a season that's lost, from a team's standpoint,

it makes sense to chase personal accolades at that point. Now, my personal opinion of Chris Johnson is that he did a little bit too much of that. There was a little bit too much of the me stuff going on, and we'll get into that a little bit with the contract stuff here in a minute. But, you know, what do you remember most from that 2009 season? 2,500 yards from scrimmage, 16 touchdowns. It was just the Chris Johnson show. Even when the team was bad, you still tuned in to see what Chris Johnson was going to do.

If you're a Titans fan, you probably owned him in fantasy. You wanted to cheer for your fantasy team. And then all of a sudden they started winning. They rip off, what, five in a row before they dropped a key game to the Colts. Shocker there. But, yeah, 2,006 yards, 5.6 yards per carry, 125 yards a game. I know backs have gone for more yards, but that

was... You're going to be hard-pressed to beat that for me, just from an individual standpoint. I compare it to Vince's rookie year. That team was okay,

but you were tuning in to see what Vince was going to do. You know, you were tuning in that year to see what Chris Johnson was going to do. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, like you said, that at least gave you a reason to watch that season. And, you know, again, they pushed it to even and then lost that game to the Chargers, which, you know, in effect ended their season. But, yeah, he was fun to watch, no doubt. And then comes back in 2010, and, you know, in effect ended their season. But, yeah, he was fun to watch, no doubt. And then he comes back in 2010, and, you know, there was a little bit, I guess,

of, you know, the contract grumblings between 2009 and 2010, and you get it. I mean, a guy that's a running back, you know, 24th pick, is, you know, making good money, but obviously not the superstar money that he was at that point and so but he came back and played in 2010 and you know had a solid year in 2010 i obviously never got back to what he was 2009 against the greatest you know single season by a running back ever so he was not going to ever get back to that point but it was it was definitely a slow decline from there and um you know they did i mean he you know the first week of the season against the raiders he had 76 yard touchdown run that next year and you know they had multiple hundred yard games and he finally was

the street got broken i remember against the steelers and in that game he had an 85 yard touchdown run that was called back because of a holding penalty and it was one of those where it was like away from the ball or not necessarily away from the ball but the guy that got held wasn't going to catch chris johnson anyway so it was one of those first same things that that was the way that streak ended but you know it went on in that season i mean the titans weren't good again but you know he chris johnson made the pro ball um but you can kind of see the writing on the wall at that point that the contract thing was going to come to kind of an ugly battle because, again, you've got this guy that's a superstar that's definitely outperforming what his current deal is.

But you've got a team that obviously has a salary cap, and they're trying to negotiate and all that kind of stuff. And you know the history of paying running backs, and we know in the end what happened with Chris Johnson. But anything from that 2010 season stands out to you? No, you were never going to match what you did in 2009. So it came back down to earth a little bit. The touches stand out to me.

251 his rookie year, then you go 358, then 316. So you kind of start to see where the Titans might have overworked him. Hard to blame them for what they did, for wanting to feed such a special talent. But you look at years beyond, and maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves here, but maybe that 2009 season, 2010 season where he went 300-plus carries in between the tackles at 190 pounds, 5'11",

maybe that started to wear down a little bit, you know, because he went from 2,000 yards to 1,300 yards, then he went to barely over 1,000 yards in 2011. So, yeah, the contract was interesting because I think we all knew somewhat that it wasn't going to work out. You know, at least that's the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach. But you also felt like, hey, you can't let this guy walk. You've got to get something done.

So, I don't know. I don't envy the Titans' decision makers back then. They did what they had to do, and it was kind of a leap of faith that Chris Johnson would stay with it and keep himself in shape and get after it. Yeah, and like you said, it was a tough spot for everybody. And again, if you're a part of an offense that has a couple of you know stars even or you know good players uh you can you could let a guy like that walk or try to trade him or whatever because he's not happy but that wasn't the case here things didn't have anything besides chris johnson so i mean i think it was mike

ronfeld was general manager at that point i mean didn't have a choice. He had to pay him. You kind of wish that... One thing that I wonder, looking back, is had they been able to get it done earlier, I wonder if the 2011 season would have gone differently. Because, look, if you want to hear it or not, Chris Johnson showed up out of shape right before week one. He missed the whole preseason. Missed training camp. Was not with the team until they started preparation.

I think it was the Jaguars that played in week one in 2011. He wasn't with the team until that week. He was out of shape. It took him quite a few weeks to get back into football shape. And he wasn't the same player. Now, I think that he lost some of the fire that he had before he got that contract. Like I said, there are people that would want to fight me for saying that. But I think if you go back and you watch him before and you watch him after,

I think that's pretty evident. Now, to be fair, like you said, when you're looking at a guy that got 358 carries in 2009, 316 carries in 2010, we know what that does to running backs, and we know that you're going to see a drop-off in production there. So, again, you know, it would have been interesting if they would have just gone ahead and, you know, kind of knocked the contract thing out earlier, if he'd have been around for training camp, if things would have been different. And, you know, I guess we can kind of break here, and then, you know, coming up,

we'll talk about, I guess, the dark years with Chris Johnson, because everything early was, you know was just awesome and fantastic and fun, but it kind of fell off after that. So we'll get into that here in just a sec. Because, like I said, picking up in 2011, he still went over 1,000 yards, like you said, 1,047. He hit 1,200 in 2012. Now, you did have, again, to be fair,

there were a few things at work here one um the offensive line was not as good uh you lost a lot of key guys after those after those that 2009-2010 season and it took the titans quite a while uh to get back to where they had a serviceable offensive line probably didn't even really have a good offensive line from 2010 until after Chris Johnson had left here. So there is that point. And, again, just the wear of giving a guy that many touches, the not having weapons around him, you know, quarterback play up in the air

from Kerry Collins, the Vince Young, the Jake Locker. I mean, they were all over the place with quarterbacks during the time here. During the time Chris Johnson was here, they were terrible teams. Again, you had Vince Young, Jeff Fisher, Norm Chow. I mean, Heimerdinger came back. You had Chris Palmer. I mean, it was kind of a disaster. The team itself was a disaster pretty much really after Chris Johnson's rookie year.

It was all downhill for him and for the franchise itself. But again, I just think that once he got paid, I think he just had a little bit different mentality. And again, it's hard to blame him. You know, when you look around and you see the guys that are there and they're not surrounding you with a talent that you hope they would. So you can see how that would wear on somebody um i don't know it just you wish that it could have ended differently um unfortunately like you said with running backs i mean you can go through a a long list of running backs that were really good early in their careers and see what happened

to them after they had those 300-plus carry seasons. They all tended to fall off, and so you saw that a lot of places. The one thing that Chris Johnson really got bad at doing, I think, late in his career was always looking for that home run instead of taking if it was blocked and you were going to be able to get two or three yards, instead of taking that and seeing what happened, he would try to dance on the backfield and he had i mean he had to have more runs that went for like negative three or more and he rang back in the in the world ever i mean i just remembered that

being so frustrating him running around behind a lot of scrimmage getting tackled for a big loss when it seemed like if he would have just you know punched it up in there he could have at least gotten a couple yards and they would have been in a better spot. So, yeah, I don't know. It seemed to me like he did a little bit more of that as his career went on, and I don't know if that was confidence that he had lost in the offensive line. I mean, I think that was definitely a part of it, and I think part of it, too, was just always trying to get back

to hitting those home runs because that was what he was so good at early in his career. Yeah, I think everything was easy for Chris Johnson until that 2011 season. The offensive line became a problem. Guard became kind of our new receiver. That was the thing that everyone wanted until finally they ended up taking Chance Wormack, which ended up not working out. But at the time, that's what everyone thought was going to fix Chris Johnson

in this running game, and of course it turned out to not. But I think the roster deteriorated around him. I think Lindale White was really good in a numbered role behind him. And after Lindale left, you know, you have javon ringer jamie harper uh in the later years you had sean green and jackie battle and guys like that uh so it was all chris uh and he just wore down you know it's my opinion that he just wore down uh i think you're right in saying that that he wanted to be the guy He wanted to be Chris Johnson in 2009 He wanted to hit those home runs when he could have just bounced it inside

And got the five yards But yeah, really frustrating end for Chris Johnson Who, you know, at the end of the day He kind of left you wanting more You know, we saw that stellar three years But really, it goes back to 2009 wanting more. We saw that stellar three years, but really, it goes back to 2009. It seems where

the bulk of his stats came from. He was just never able to recreate it. He fell off that cliff quicker than I think most people would have thought he would. Yeah, absolutely. I think

there's a there's a good debate to be had between you know the the best running back in the titans era um you know guys obviously between him and eddie george will be the two guys that would be in that conversation um completely different guys completely different styles um and if you go back and look at you know we're talking about you talk about carry numbers i mean listen eddie george 335 is rookie year 357 348 320 403 315 and 343 and that's eddie's like first you know seven years in the league um so you know they that was you know heavy they just they just turned out handed to him and i mean he you know 4.1 was his best yard per carry average and you know different offense different era all those things i mean so

when you look at when you look at those numbers compared to what chris johnson put up i mean obviously you you talk about um you know johnson obviously the more explosive player the more exciting player but you know people that remember back to those teams when eddie george first came he was the heart and soul of the team he was a leader and all that stuff you know chris johnson never really seemed to embrace that role now you know not not every guy is that guy that wasn't really chris johnson's personality um he didn't have the that you know just um i mean he had the star quality on the field but he didn't have it off the field i mean i remember he was on a dan patrick interview on the radio show and dan patrick basically like hung up on him because you couldn't i mean he sounded like he just rolled out

of bed you know it didn't seem like he's putting a lot of effort into that stuff and that was fine but i think he just didn't he didn't get embraced as a leader like a guy like Eddie George did. But again, when you look at Chris Johnson at his peak, it's hard to find a running back that was that good. You can point at Marshall Falk with the Rams. Edger and James had a couple years with the Colts. If you want to go back to prior to that, in the era where guys weren't carrying the ball 350 400 times I mean that's a different type deal but I

mean 2008 2009 Chris Johnson you know I'd put up against just about anybody I mean the big debate at the time was if he or Adrian Peterson was the best running back in the league and that was something that you know depending on you know which side you were on, obviously both sides would get pretty heated on that. And I don't know. I mean, I was always biased toward Chris Johnson. I think probably looking back, if you had a neutral offensive line, I think it would be hard to put Chris Johnson ahead of Adrian Peterson, just knowing all the different, I guess, I guess, tools he has in his game.

But at the same time, there's never been a home run threat like Chris Johnson. I don't know if there ever will be again. And it was just unbelievable to watch him hit those runs. And I was saying before, I think a lot of times the reason that he got such big runs is because you would have guys chasing him in the secondary, and they would take their normal angle to try to tackle him and when they got there he was already gone i mean he was just that much faster than everybody else and i think people didn't realize it i don't think you

could see it on tape i i think it showed up and when guys were on the field with him they were amazed at how how much faster he was than even they thought. So, yeah, I mean, he was fun to watch. And, you know, you wish that he could have been on some better teams. And that's not his fault. Like you said, the offensive line deteriorated. You go back and look at that. I mean, you know, even his rookie year when the team was 13-3, the offensive side of the ball, besides the offensive line,

there was no talent there. They were just really good on defense. And so that was what, you know, made them a viable team. But, yeah, I mean, just really good on defense and so that was what you know made them a a viable team but um yeah i mean just looking back on him i think i have a little bit of a bitter taste in my mouth just because of the way it all ended in the contract and all that stuff and you wish that that could have gone down differently you wish that he could have been on some better teams but i think i probably blame him more than I should for that because most of that stuff wasn't his fault. You just wonder, he was on one good team and that was in 2008. He was on a couple mediocre teams and then he was on some really bad teams. So, you know, you talk about Eddie George and how much of

an icon he is today. You just wonder if Chris Johnson is joining the team right now, the Titans are set up to win over the next five, six seasons, what would his legacy be if he's a part of playoff runs over the span of multiple seasons? So that's what you've got to factor in. Unfortunately, you've got really good players on really bad teams. And unfortunately for Chris Johnson, he just played in an era of really bad Titan football.

I shouldn't say really bad, but really mediocre Titan football. We'll put it that way. So legacy, it took a beating over the last three years, but that 2009 season, you can't deny it. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, like you said, I think most people probably remember Chris Johnson more fondly than I do, but I think part of that is just being a better Titans fan

and just knowing that, you know, especially that 2008 season when they lost the Ravens. They were the best team in the league that year, the Titans were, and it was just such a heartbreak to lose the Ravens in Nashville again and all that kind of stuff. So, anyway, hopefully you enjoyed kind of that walk down memory lane. Like I said, we're going to do some more of that stuff as we go throughout the offseason. We'll do Kenny Brett and Cortland Finnegan.

I mean, a lot of guys that were brought up and then some of the, you know, even lesser known guys. I mean, if you were around, I mean, there were some cult heroes like a Lavelle Hawkins. I don't know if we'll do an interview on, I mean, an episode on him. But I mean, there were like Elbert museum miracles. I mean, we would have like knockdown drag out fights in the comments about how good Lavelle Hawkins was. And I think that just speaks to the desperation that Titans fans have for a receiver. But anyway,

it's just fun to go back and look at some of these guys. And so hopefully you can give us feedback on that. If you liked it again, you know, guys that you would like for us to talk about or whatever all right terry anything else on chris johnson before we get out that's all i got all right so um like i said we will hopefully get some news here over the next couple of days uh for on the field stuff for the titans currently so we'll hit that when it becomes available and like i said the next episode that we'll probably do something like this will be Kenny Britt, another very interesting guy, up-and-down career here with the Titans. So for Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening to Locked on Titans,

and we'll talk to you again later this week.