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People are quick to say that Chris Johnson isn’t what he used to be, and that is one of the reasons the Jets didn’t pick up his option.
Yes, he probably doesn’t run the 4.24 he ran when he came out of East Carolina.
But he can still play.
Look, when you run 4.24, and you lose a step, perhaps he now run 4.35. He had a step he could afford to lose and still be plenty fast.
He had his moments this year for the Jets. There is still talent there.
The bigger issue is that he has a hard time embracing being a role player.
That was a big problem with this player last year.
You just can’t have that on teams if you want to compete for a championship.
He didn’t like being a platoon back, even though that is exactly what he signed up for.
Though he acts like that isn’t what he signed up for.
“Basically, it was a situation where I was going there to be the guy, or whatever,” Johnson told NFL.com on Monday. “And it was still said both guys (Johnson and Ivory) were gonna get playing time but, you know, I think it was after the second game or something like that, it just switched over and I was getting less and less playing time.
“I think a lot of it was out of (coach Rex Ryan’s) hands because when I sat down and talked to Rex before I signed with the Jets, my role and my situation was going to be totally different to what actually happened. It was never the type of thing where I was just being outplayed or anything like that. It was never a situation where I had the opportunity to show my talents and be used the way that I was supposed to be used.”
He’s wrong and delusional.
All those people out there that thought he was coming in to be “the guy,” raise your hands?
That is ridiculous.
Chris Ivory and Bilal Powell did a nice job platooning in 2013. So why would the Jets just give Johnson the job?
That was never the plan.
The signing didn’t show great planning
Aside from having a terrific returning platoon in Ivory and Powell, the Jets added a player in Johnson who has a history of not liking the whole platoon-thing.
He complained about it when Shonn Greene signed with Tennessee, and then, at times, this past season.
Long-time NFL defensive coordinator Ray Horton, in 2013, when he was in Cleveland, said Chris Ivory and Marshawn Lynch are the two “most violent runners in the NFL.”
At the end of a Jets win over Oakland, Ivory had a touchdown run where he broke five tackles. So many defenders want nothing to do with tackling the guy.
So Johnson thought they were just going to blow everything up, and just make him the featured back?
And notice how he said Rex told him the role was going to be different than it was.
Why would Rex say something like that?
The organization loved Ivory.
The problem is Rex wants to be loved by his players, so sometimes it leads him into telling them grandiose things about his plans for them. Good cop, bad cop. Like when he told Derrick Mason, when he came in to be the Jets’ third receiver in 2011, he would catch 80 passes. That was bizarre.
The Jets did the right thing moving on from Johnson.
His attitude is bad for their clubhouse.
He’s a role player now who is unwilling to accept it.
Bill Polian wrote recently about the kind of players he looked for were “players who will give it all they’ve got and the team is what counts. I’m going to check my ego out the door.”
Clearly Johnson was incapable of checking his ego at the door.
He can still contribute to a team.
The problem isn’t he lost his skills.
The problem is he hates sharing the rock.
February 16, 2015
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