Larry
Posted: October 26th, 2009 | Filed under: Other Sports | 49 Comments »
My father played for coach from “rememeber the titans”. Our coach played golf. My father played with redskins briefley. Our coach. Nuthn.
– Twitter from toonicon (Larry Johnson).
I suppose it is pretty well known, at least in the greater Kansas City metropolitan area, that I sort of see myself as Priest Holmes’ Boswell. For four years, from 2001 to 2004, I had this strange, interesting, confusing, intricate journalistic relationship with Priest. It should be said that he was an absolutely amazing running back those four years. Amazing. In 2001, he led the NFL in rushing. In some ways, that was his least impressive year.
In 2002, he was on his way to perhaps the greatest season a running back ever had before he hurt his hip — in 13 1/2 games, he ran for 1,615 yards, caught 70 passes, scored 24 touchdowns and gained 2,287 yards form scrimmage. I have often tried to project that season out … simple math comes out like this:
16 games:
1,900 yards rushing.
82 receptions for 790 yards.
2,691 yards from scrimmage
28 touchdowns.
Amazing as those numbers look, I believe he might have done even better than that. He had a real shot a 2,000 yards rushing, 800 yards receiving and 30 touchdowns. He was that good and the Chiefs offensive line was that good. He could do more or less anything he wanted back then.
In 2003, he was not quite the same — he was never quite the same after the hip injury, I don’t think — but he still set an NFL record with 27 rushing touchdowns, and he had 2,110 yards from scrimmage and he was a fantasy football monster.
In 2004, he again was not quite the same. And he got hurt. But even so, in a half season — eight games — he rushed for 892 yards and scored 15 touchdowns. So … double up those numbers … yeah, not bad. In 38 games from 2002-2004, Priest Holmes scored 66 touchdowns. SIXTY-SIX TOUCHDOWNS. That looks like a misprint. But it was very real. It’s impossible to separate what Holmes did from the brilliance of that Chiefs offensive line and passing attack, but if that Chiefs offense was the Godfather, then Holmes was Brando.
And for whatever reason, we connected. Maybe it was the chess matches we played — we used to play every week. Or maybe we just sort of understood each other. Priest was never easy for most reporters. Heck, he wasn’t easy for me. After most games, Priest would announce he wasn’t talking to the media. But it was understood that I would sort of stand around after the game for an hour or an hour and a half, however long it took, waiting for him to finish getting his body and mind recovered from the game.* And then we would go over the game, talk about various things. It became ritual. And Priest Holmes, like many great athletes, believed in ritual.
*Football took a terrible toll on Priest Holmes. I guess it does on most football players, but I saw it first hand with Priest. He would have to enter another world emotionally and physically to take on the violence and fury of the NFL. Priest is about my height. He wasn’t especially fast — he went undrafted even though he played at the University of Texas. He wasn’t an especially overpowering runner. He was a great running back because of his extreme preparation (I suspect no running in the history of the NFL read blockers better or was more precise about steps than Priest Holmes) and because of his extreme will.
Anyway, I’ve never had quite that sort of relationship with any other elite athlete … I’m still not entirely sure how it happened with Priest. And because of that relationship, I did not have much interest in Larry Johnson when the Kansas City Chiefs shocked everyone by drafting him in 2003. Nobody really understood the pick at the time. The Chiefs desperately needed defensive help … they had led the NFL in points scored in 2002, and they still finished 8-8. That defense was some kind of awful. The official explanation for the Larry Johnson pick was that the Chiefs were worried about the health of Priest Holmes — and they had every right to be worried. The official explanation was that Larry Johnson was simply too good a value to pass up with the 27th pick*. The official explanation was not the whole truth, of course. It seems to be that Chiefs president Carl Peterson had fallen in love with Johnson’s talents and, against the wishes of head coach Dick Vermeil, he took LJ with the pick.
*The Chiefs actually had the 16th pick in the draft but, not seeing a defensive player who fit their eye, they traded down to 27. That would not be worth a side-note except Pittsburgh is the team that traded up to 16 … and with that pick they took safety Troy Polamalu, one of the most dominating defensive players in the NFL.
I don’t think it’s revisionist history to say that Larry Johnson looked awful in his first camp. I remember it being the talk of camp at the time. He looked plodding and slow and like he could think of about 237 places he would rather be. He also fumbled a bit. He was angry then, legitimately angry, and the reasons were easy to understand. He did not get a real chance to play in college until his senior year. And he should have won the Heisman Trophy that senior year … he rushed for more than 2,000 yards, scored 29 touchdowns, and averaged 7.8 yards per carry. He was actually averaging eight yards per carry — EIGHT YARDS PER CARRY — going into the bowl game. He finished third in the voting behind Carson Palmer and Brad Banks.
And then, he had these big NFL dreams — Johnson is a student of NFL history — and he ended up getting drafted by a team that already had Priest Holmes coming off one of the great running back seasons ever. Yes, he was very angry, and he brooded constantly, and his coaches and teammates were annoyed by him. He wanted the ball. He only carried the ball 20 times his rookie season.
In 2004, though, Priest Holmes got hurt. Believe it or not, Larry Johnson was not next up … a running back named Derrick Blaylock became the starter (and he had a 186-yard rushing game — man oh man was that a good offensive line). But Blaylock got hurt, and Larry Johnson got a chance to carry the ball. He was amazing. The Chiefs had one of the great offensive lines in the history of the NFL then (anchored by future Hall of Famers Will Shields and Willie Roaf and soon-to-be Pro Bowler Brian Waters) and Larry Johnson scored 10 touchdowns in his final five games — three of them were runs of 32 yards or more. He was clearly lacking various other skills — he was close-to-useless as a pass blocker and he was a limited receiver. And with Priest Holmes more or less filling up my time, I didn’t really take much notice of Johnson except to notice that, damn, he ran hard.
And then there’s 2005 — and that’s the year when everything crescendoed for Larry Johnson. Anger met opportunity, all behind a breathtakingly good offensive line. It was awe inspiring. Johnson started nine games in 2005 — and he ran for 100 yards in all nine. He rushed for 1,351 yards and scored 17 touchdowns in those nine games. He ran for 211 yards against Houston, scored three touchdowns against Dallas, broke off touchdown runs of 49, 14 and 20 yards against Cincinnati. The line was so good that he was regularly able to break though the first line of defense, and then he would unleash … he would run over linebackers and defensive backs … damn, he ran hard. I wrote a column that year comparing him to Jim Brown, and heard from some people who were infuriated by the comparison though I should also say I heard from two of Jim Brown’s former teammates who thought the comparison was just right. ”Same guy,“ one of those ex-teammates wrote.
In 2006, Herm Edwards became head coach of the Chiefs … and things changed. For one thing, Willie Roaf — who is probably the greatest offensive tackle I ever saw up close — retired. For another, Trent Green, the Chiefs prolific quarterback, suffered a concussion in the first game. And third, Edwards wanted to change the basic structure of the Chiefs. The team had scored a bunch of points from 2002-2005 — more than any team in the NFL by a pretty substantial margin — but they had only made the playoffs once, and they lost that playoff game. Edwards believed the team wasn’t tough enough. He wanted to refocus the team’s persona. The Chiefs were now about Larry Johnson.
Something changed at that point. Roy Williams, when asked why his assistant coach Matt Doherty flamed out as head coach at North Carolina, shrugged and said: “Those 18 inches can be pretty wide.” He was referring to the 18-inch gap between the head coach’s chair and the chair of the No. 1 assistant coach. It seems to me now — and yes, I appreciate that this is a lot of pop psychology — that Larry Johnson was built to be the outsider. He thrived on proving people wrong. He thrived on feeling under-appreciated and mistreated and unloved. He could be charming and funny and smart (he once came out for a Herm Edwards press conference and did a dead-on Herm impression to the shock of the media), but you always got the impression that he wanted to hide that side of himself. He seemed to feel like that side of himself wasn’t real.
And so, he played the angry young man … and it all made sense when he had reasons to be angry. But then, suddenly, he was an NFL star. He was famous. He was successful. He had a coach who didn’t just like him but built an entire team around him (in 2006, Larry Johnson got 416 carries … an NFL record). And suddenly, the angry act didn’t make much sense to anyone, least of all to LJ. What did he have to be angry about? Nobody knew. Only he stayed angry. He was arrested for assault for waving a gun in his girlfriend’s face. Charges were dropped. He was arrested again, this time for allegedly pushing his girlfriend to the ground. Charges were dropped. Daily Larry Johnson rumors emerged around town. In 2008, he was arrested two more times for assault — once for pushing a woman in a night club and a second time for spitting a drink in a woman’s face. Off the field he was out of control.
And on the field? In 2006, when he was getting 25 to 30 carries every single game, he still ran with purpose and talent. He ran for 1,789 yards, scored 19 touchdowns, was one of the stars of the league even if the offensive line wasn’t nearly as good. But, yes, something did seem missing. He yard per carry average dropped a yard. His enthusiasm for contact, his sporting rage, his ability to gain two or three extra yards without people seeming to notice, it all seemed to be withering. He ran for only 32 yards in the playoff game against Indianapolis and afterward bitched about the Chiefs offense trying to run the ball against a defense that knew it was it coming. It seemed wrong — Larry Johnson suddenly didn’t want the ball so much.
What followed is pretty typical NFL stuff. Johnson wanted a lucrative new contract even though his first contract had not expired. The Chiefs gave it to him even though they were well aware that NFL running backs who run the ball more than 400 times in a season are usually used up. Will Shields retired, leaving that once great offensive line in tatters. And Larry Johnson diminished before our very eyes. You could blame it on a thousand things, and any one of those could be right. Maybe his brilliant early performance was simply due to a great offensive line and a multiple offense. Maybe the 400 carries in a season finished him. Maybe injuries were the key. Maybe he simply lost control of himself and his life. Or maybe a talent like Larry Johnson is temporary, a flash across the sky. Maybe nobody can run that angry for very long.
Whatever the reasons, Larry Johnson averaged 3.5 yards per carry in 2007 and got hurt. He ran for 874 yards in a bleak 2008 season overwhelmed by off-the-field incidents. And this year, he averages 2.7 yards per carry and has not scored a single touchdown. Larry Johnson will turn 30 years old in mid-November. The general feeling in Kansas City and around the NFL is that he’s done as a good NFL back. Maybe the fact everyone doubts him again will reignite him. Then again, maybe not.
And I can’t help but feel sad for him. I like him in a strange way … maybe because I have seen a little bit of that side he doesn’t like showing people. Also I loved watching him play football.
The Larry Johnson Tweet that tops this post is gone from his account now … I assume he removed it along with various other angry things he wrote last night after the Chiefs humiliating loss to San Diego. A few of the angry comments he wrote to fans are still up, though, if you want to see those … sort of the vapor trail of his Twitter rage. People have asked me why he would just go off on Twitter like he did, but I think I understand. Anger helped make Larry Johnson into a breathtakingly good NFL running back. Anger helped make him famous and successful and rich. Anger helped him fulfill the dreams he had been having since he was a child.
The trouble is, at some point, all those other things faded away. He’s not a breathtakingly good running back now. He’s not especially famous, not particularly successful, and being rich — assuming he has been smart with his money — isn’t enough. This is the the sad thing about Larry Johnson. All he’s left with is the anger.
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Circle me, Disgruntled
Maybe he is mad because he bought season tickets for the Royals last year.
circle me, dick vermeil
I was shocked when the Chiefs drafted Larry and I never liked him from the beginning. I didn’t like his attitude and Vermeil put the diapers on him. He ran with rage, but you knew it couldn’t last with a big contract and Carl gave it to him anyway. I’m sick of his whining over the years. He always whines and never does anything about it. He should be a team leader, but it seems like Larry just loves him some Larry. I remember a couple years ago there was some press about how he had spent the entire offseason in NYC trying to get a rap album with Jay Z.
I know this is beating a dead horse, but Larry is worth a big contract but Jared Allen wasn’t??
Watching Larry run the ball Sunday, it looked as if there were times in the game where he tried to revert back to his 2005 self and run everyone over. Because of his declining skill set howe ver, he simply could not.
I don’t really understand the tweet. By “not really” I mean “not at all”. Great post though, Joe.
I would cut him twice…just to get that extra little bit of joy…cant block, cant catch, and averages 2.7 YPC while calling fans vulgar names and taunting them for not playing, while telling the world that if your parents have more experience than your teachers, then the teacher must be an idiot and suck. he is really nothing more than a HUGE waste of space, time and money…cut him now, they have the cash and honestly, who on the team between savage/charles cant run for 2.7?
Great post Joe, rings true, absolutely final and definitive on LJ. Now he’s the permanent NFL poster boy for out-of-control twitter. Wonder if he’ll be suspended and fined? He needs to go home and start on getting a new life. He REALLY needs to do that. I think soon football will be over for LJ.
Derrick Blaylock’s 2004 tells you all you need to know about Larry Johnson.
Johnson’s success was a function of Roaf, Sheilds, Waters,Weigman and Tony Richardson.
Richardson went on to lead the way to a 1200 yard season by Chester Taylor in 2006,
a 1300 yard season for Adrian Peterson in 2007(the highest avg of his career 5.6), a 1300 yard season for Thomas Jones in 2008 and a combined 800 yards already for Thomas Jones/Leon Washington this year.
All those guys are gone now except Waters, and Larry Johnson is a joke.
Look at the stats Charles and Savage are averaging 5.0 and 5.1 yards a carry this season and LJ is averaging 2.7. If L.J. ever had any legitimate talent, it’s gone now.
LJ is my favorite Chiefs player. LJ is and always have been angry. The o-line and bonehead playcalling is fuel to LJ fire. LJ is limited with this current regime. LJ hasn’t even been close to be rewarded a chance to get a TD. You can sense he was pissed off when Haley called 3 straight pass calls at the goal line a few weeks ago, to prove to everyone that Cassell is their man…
Enjoy the concert tonight if that is still on your list of things to do…A game #7ALCS would have really muddied the waters!
I guess he means that his present head coach, as Howard Cosell might say, “never played the game.”
His college coach did play the game, but I think it was back in the days of leather helmets and the single wing.
Thanks Spud, I dig it.
@ #10 – Larry, is that you?
“This is the the sad thing about Larry Johnson. All he’s left with is the anger.”
I dunno… where does the sad part come in? Your description of the guy makes him sound like regular jackass to me.
@ #14 – I thought that too, but the real Larry can’t spell “regime”, “straight”, or “their” correct. Could be his lawyer, though…
Beautiful piece of work. This post, not LJ. LJ is just a piece of work. Nothing beautiful about him.
But in all seriousness this really is some great writing, and put a lot of my thoughts into words like I never could. Thank you!
Biggest non-story of the week.
Washed-up player on a 1-6 team tweets something moronic about his coach. Who cares?
Haley really should just cut him and move on.
For one and a half years LJ was a young angry beast, and he took his anger out on other teams. He looked like a future hall of famer.
Unfortunately, he has been here for 6 and a half years, and even the good ones there were problems.
He is being outrushed by the other backs already, and I say that if Kolby Smith becomes ready, you just cut him (or deactivate him.) The Chiefs put themselves in the position to do that financially prior to the year.
It hurts me to see LJ ready to break Priest’s team record. Priest Holmes gave me more joy than any other athlete I have watched in almost 40 years of being a sports fan.
Priest was only the true starter in 52 games for the Chiefs. In those 52 games, he rushed for 5431 yards, with 2145 receiving yards and 76 touchdowns. (2331 yards from scrimmage per 16 games) Amazing!
Utterly great prose as usual, Joe. Thanks.
I think the only reason he’s still the starter is because he doesn’t turn the ball over, and Haley knows that this team has no margin for error. Unless he does something in practice that isn’t showing up in the game.
Both the actions of Larry Johnson and the subsequent discussion relating to his transgressions have grown tiresome in this town. Time for him to go.
The hotter a fire burns, the faster it burns out. Anger is not a long term fuel and the power it generates is not sustainable.
“He’s not especially famous” – Infamous is more like it….
Mikey @18
Maybe . . . to you.
But even though I have no interest in the NFL at all I found this to be an enthralling story.
I’m disappointed — not one “Centaur” reference.
You know, when I see “Larry Johnson” I still think first of the UNLV guy who dressed like a grandmother for those Nike ads.
Heard that Bruce canceled his KC show tonight due to a death in the family — anyone know what’s up?
Excellent post. KC misses you, Joe.
“The official explanation was not the whole truth, of course. It seems to be that Chiefs president Carl Peterson had fallen in love with Johnson’s talents and, against the wishes of head coach Dick Vermeil, he took LJ with the pick.”
Actually, Joe, the “whole” truth is that Carl Peterson drafted LJ as incentive to force Priest Holmes to come back from injuries he sustained late in the 2002 season and as leverage against Holmes’ insinuated hold-out for the upcoming 2003 season. Peterson’s ego would not allow a player, even one that had already done as much as Priest, to have the upper hand in a brewing contract dispute. So the defensive deficiencies that needed to be addressed, as Vermeil had pleaded, were put aside. Peterson won the battle but lost the war. Hence the crash and burn of the latter half of the 2003 season and the puntless Chiefs/Colt playoff game.
Carl Peterson is the architect of this entire mess.
perhaps LJ got his “social media” skillz from Tyshawn Taylor?
bruce’s cousin/asst. road manager found dead in his room today.
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An elite pro athlete frustrated with his situation and diminishing skills? Lashing out with regrettable comments??
Ever since the O-line was dismantled the Chiefs can’t run. LJ is a rotten human being but he’d be a fine running back if the O-line was better.
If this team was better, no one would care if LJ was washed up or not. They’d cut him or demote him in favor of Jamal Charles, and move on. LJ seems to understand that because the Chiefs are so bad, he can essentially hold them hostage.
I said it at the time, and I will say it again. No way LJ is the same runner toting that fat wallet. Once he got the money, forget about production. Whereas it used to take 2 or 3 (or more) tacklers to bring him down, now he hits the ground when he see’s a shadow…
It’s not just about fat wallets. There are runners who’ve put up the numbers while being handsomely rewarded… but how many runners have been effective (much less dominant) after hitting their 30th birthday? And especially if they’ve lugged the ball 375, 400 times in one season. The tread wears fast. Remember Jamal Anderson? Heck, remember Earl Campbell?
For every guy like a Barry Sanders or Jim Brown who get out at the very top of their game, there are legions who crumble. Runners don’t tend to have gradual declines, either – usually they run until they go over the cliff, or into the brick wall. Pro football is one of the cruelest sports to begin with, and doubly so to the featured back. A young man in the prime of life and fantastic shape who’s lost that half-step can still spread a basketball floor, hit jumpers, rebound, post up…. can still get to the open ice, or take it away… can still hit pitches and shift from the middle infield to a corner. But in football, that half-step means a steady diet of 23-year old punks who don’t know squat about coverage and schemes and play design making their names at your expense. For a proud and angry guy like Johnson, it must be doubly hard.
And yet, somehow, blocking backs who get ten touches a year can last until they’re 38…
Why is his username “toonicon”?
>>>>— Johnson is a student of NFL history —
Judging by his tweets, he is not a student of anything.
I think he’s angry that he’s spending his golden years with a team that can’t get out of its own way. They can’t throw the ball and their offensive line couldn’t block a toddler. I think he’s still the same guy and I think if a team with a decent line in need of a difference maker would and should take that risk on him.
And I’m sure in another 3-5 years we’ll be having this same exact discussion about Zack Greinke. How all his talent was wasted on a team that couldn’t get out of their own way.
YES! LJ can’t practice or play! The league is investigating him. Don’t go away mad LGay!!!!
[...] on Oct 26, 2009 9:03 AM CDT up reply actions 1 recs … http://www.arrowheadpride.com/ Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Larry Oct 26, 2009 And because of that relationship, I did not have much interest in Larry Johnson when [...]
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » LarryAnd because of that relationship, I did not have much interest in Larry Johnson when the Kansas City Chiefs shocked everyone by drafting him in 2003. Nobody really understood the pick at the time. The Chiefs desperately needed … I don’t think it’s revisionist history to say that Larry Johnson looked awful in his first camp. I remember it being the talk of camp at the time. He looked plodding and slow and like he could think of about 237 places he would rather be. … Read more [...]
I don’t really mind him calling out the coach, or even really insulting the fans. Immature? Certainly, but nothing that I would consider really, really wrong. Calling people he disagreed with Fags, now that I have a huge problem with. In fact, I have a problem with the fact that the media is not actually using the word, as I feel like just saying “homosexual slur” does not convey just how horrible of a word it is. If a white guy can’t, and shouldn’t, get away for calling a black dude the “n” word, I’d like to see a similar firestorm over the use of faggot from LJ. It’s a disgusting word, and worthy of the same firestorm that a white play would have recieved if he had called a black fan the “n” word.
Larry was never a great back. He’s always run too straight up, and never had an NFL quality sense of reading blocks. He was just, for a couple years, the luckiest running back ever, with an O line that could blow holes big enough for Jason Whitlock to run through. The last two years he’s run the ball like a quarterback in the victory formation. He’s the same runner he’s always been, but his luck finally ran out.
This whole sideshow has been great for Haley. Takes some heat off of him and puts the focus on Johnson.
Hopefully the NFL suspends Johnson for 1 game w/o pay, the Chiefs suspend him for 1 game w/o pay and then he gets cut. His tweet about “you can’t stop my checks from coming” needs to be flipped on its head.
The day Pioli dumps him will be a fine and glorious day indeed.
Joe,
Fantastic. I somehow missed the fact you had posted until now…you reminded me how great it was to cheer for Priest. Not solely for his on the field performance, but for the man behind it.
Thanks.
Upon further reflection, it appears this was just LJ’s way of getting out of practice on the bye week. Remember last year?