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Emmitt Smith came to Chad Johnson's defense the other day on ESPN — said the flamboyant wide receiver is being made the "escape goat" for the Cincinnati Bengals' woes this season — and now a lot of those hide-behind-a-bogus-name Internet posters and airwave anonymous radio callers are mocking Smith. Inarticulate, they say. Embarrassing. A mush-mouthed former jock who doesn't know a scape from an escape. In my book, some of those web weasels and talk-radio toadies need to get a life. Verbiage aside, Emmitt had it right. I wrote this in my "Through the Arch" blog after Sunday's Bengals' game and I'm bringing it up here again. Johnson is being unfairly singled out by certain media types, some Bengals fans and, if ESPN's Chris Mortensen is to be believed — and he's one of the best in the business — "a prominent member of the Bengals organization."
They say Johnson — for all those catches against double-and-sometimes-triple-coverage — might not be worth the trouble. He's high maintenance, they say. Egotistical, divisive, not team-oriented. Some think the Bengals might be better off to trade him after the season. A few say get rid of him now. And that brings us back to Smith. His escape goat is perfect terminology. The Bengals most dynamic player is being turned into a can-chewing, head-butting billy goat while the real culprits are slipping back into the barnyard shadows. I'm talking about: • A defense that misses tackles, doesn't pressure the quarterback, rarely stops a big-time runner and gives up more than 31 points a game, second-worst in the NFL. • A coaching staff that hasn't always brought its A game on Sunday afternoons and one Monday night. • A front office that too often brings in on-their-last-legs, fire-sale free agents who never create so much as a spark here. • Fellow teammates who flaunt the law and NFL rules until they are arrested, suspended and mothballed for much of the season. Meanwhile, what has Johnson done? He's the only player ever to lead his conference in reception yards four years straight. And this season he's second in the NFL to Randy Moss, who's played seven games to his six. His mere presence on the field — and the defensive attention that draws — opens things up for receiving mate T.J. Houshmandzadeh and often spreads the defense enough so that Bengals runners Rudi Johnson and now Kenny Watson don't face an overstacked defensive front. Johnson works hard in practice, has an overwhelming passion to win and is fun in a mostly tongue-in-cheek way. Off the field, he stays out of trouble, does a lot for the community and charities worldwide and he brings favorable national attention to a city often over looked and a franchise that has been a flop for the better part of two decades. You want to trade that? If the team were 4-2, not 2-4, none of this would come up. And Mortensen's reporting aside, if you want a real insider's tip on this team, there are Bengals players who are malcontents, disrespectful of their coach and poor teammates. But they're not Chad Johnson. Like Smith said, he's being made a goat while others escape. Dayton Daily News http://www.daytondailynews.com/s/content/oh/story/sports/pro/bengals/2007/10/23/ddn102407arch.html |
