GLENDALE, Ariz. — Imagine if Chris Johnson had gone ahead and called it quits.
“Oh, man,” Johnson said, rolling his eyes with a smile. “I don’t know. It would be a situation where, heck, it probably would be a crisis right about now.”
Yeah, for him and for the Cardinals.
Here he is, second in the NFL with 567 rushing yards after gaining 122 during Monday night’s 26-18 great escape over the visiting Baltimore Ravens , and if the Cardinals didn’t have Johnson, they probably don’t win this game. They’re probably not 5-2 and sitting pretty atop the NFC West .
They also wouldn’t have the franchise’s fastest, most lethal and most legitimate running back since Terry Metcalf back in the 1970s. And Metcalf wasn’t even a workhorse. He was more of a gadget guy with big-play explosiveness.
Think about it. Since when have the Cardinals ever had a running back like this? Ottis Anderson and Stump Mitchell were nice. Edgerrin James and Johnny Johnson had a couple of decent seasons. But they’re no Chris Johnson and neither, of course, were all the short-term supposed saviors over the years such as Garrison Hearst, Thomas Jones and Beanie Wells.
And to think, the Cardinals almost never got a chance to sign him – even when nobody else in the NFL had any desire to.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Johnson said, surrounded by reporters and cameras in the victors' locker room. “I mean, going from playing seven years straight to not knowing what my next move was going to be, not knowing what my next situation was going to be.
“It was everything, man. It was me contemplating retirement and not getting any calls. Me being hurt. Me having to work so hard just to get back. And my hands on top of that – not being able to use my hand for about three months. There was just a lot going into it.”
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