By JON WEBB
Glasgow Daily Times
GLASGOW
July 04, 2009 10:09 am
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Apparently Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson (that’s right: Johnson. I won’t call him Ochocinco regardless of its legality. It’s nothing more than a self-applied nickname, ala someone named Rick referring to himself as “Slick Rick,” and as such it is despicable and must be stopped) is a boxer now.
In a story/press-release-ish thing on the Cincinnati Bengals Web site, Johnson extolls the virtues of boxing.
“I wanted to do the hardest sport to build up my body to play a 50-game season if I had to ...,” Johnson says in the story. “Anybody who knows sports will tell you boxing is the toughest. Boxers are in 10-times better shape than football players.”
His participation in the sweet, bloody science marks the third sport in which Johnson has taken part. In 2007, he (in)famously raced and, with the help of a head start, defeated a thoroughbred in a race for charity.
Johnson’s mid-career evolution as a Renaissance Receiver is great, I suppose, but it does incite a troubling question: when will he start playing football again?
Johnson caught a mediocre 53 balls for 540 yards and four touchdowns last season, giving one the impression the Bengals would have been better served had they trotted out (pun) Johnson’s thumbless, thoroughbred former opponent, a player who, at the very least, could have literally carried the team on his back.
Granted, last year’s statistical cliff-fall-off was sudden.
Between 2003 and 2008, Johnson displayed talent and put up numbers hardly equaled by anyone in his position. His production rendered all of his inane antics (touchdown dances, “Who Covered ‘85 in ‘05?”, Future Hall of Famer glitter-tinged jackets) stomach-able, and always provided the true Bengals fan with the comfort of knowing, yes, he’s a sideshow, but he’s a top-notch sideshow.
You get the feeling, however, he may be on the verge of just becoming a carnival.
Dips in NFL player performance often happen fast, and very rarely do they reverse.
Former Seahawk running back Shaun Alexander set the (then) single-season touchdown record for a running back in 2005 by scoring 27 touchdowns, all the while amassing 1,880 yards.
Alexander averaged 1,500 yards and 15 touchdowns a season between 2001 and 2005 but in 2006, after a monstrous year, even more monstrous contract and a few injuries, Alexander scored only seven times and failed to reach the 1,000 yard mark for the first time since 2000.
As a Redskin in 2008, Alexander rushed for 24 yards and zero touchdowns.
For anyone who may not understand football, allow me to assure you: that’s not so good.
But, yes, NFL running backs are a lot like child actors - popular, fun and money-making at first, but increasingly irrelevant and depressing as time drones on - so comparing Johnson to an RB may not be fair.
But it is fair to say Johnson doesn’t really provide much in the way of emotional leadership or positive locker room presence.
He is a bullhorn of a man, a striped distraction who is one more bad season away from becoming Freddie Mitchell (remember him? Exactly).
Yes, he is one of the few non-police blotter sources of press for the team, but Johnson has a funny way of going through an entire interview without ever uttering the word “Bengal.”
He races horses, he grows mohawks, he changes his name to an incorrectly-Spanish incarnate of 85, but he doesn’t, at least above superficial, lip-service levels, ever talk about winning football games.
Maybe it’s because he’s a Bengal, and he doesn’t talk about winning in the same way a Siberia resident doesn’t talk about the beach.
But maybe that’s the problem.
The team is long on personalities (people named Ickey, Boomer, etc.) but dwarf-ish on any sort of winning tradition.
Sadly, the Bengals didn’t win much when Johnson caught 90 or so balls and put up double-digit touchdowns, so what will happen if he continues to regress?
In the same story mentioned above, Johnson promises Bengals fans “two seasons in one” to make up for 2008, but if these hypothetical two seasons are anything like 2008, I don’t want any part of them.
And if Johnson can’t rebound statistically, I don’t want any part of him either.
Boxing can have him.
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