Teicher: Now what, Larry? While you were gone, your team changed — for the better

[Tribal Warfare]

Now what, Larry? While you were gone, your team changed — for the better
By ADAM TEICHER
The Kansas City Star

Chan Gailey is the man who orchestrates the Chiefs’ offense, so it’s his job to understand how the introduction of various parts will affect the performance of the whole, for better or for worse.

He spends early mornings, late nights and the hours in between at work. Last week, his project was to figure how the return of Larry Johnson would impact the Chiefs and their suddenly robust offense.

But as the week wound down, Gailey was still as curious as anyone else.

“I don’t have a great feel for it,” admitted Gailey, the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator. “We are headed in a certain direction on offense. We hope he will fit into the direction we’re going right now.”

Amid his benching by the Chiefs and an NFL suspension for violating the league’s personal-conduct policy, Johnson missed four games. Since he’s been gone, the Chiefs changed their offense from one based around a power running game to one centered on the talents of quarterback Tyler Thigpen.

The Chiefs frequently spread the field with receivers, use the shotgun formation and work without a huddle. While they are far from explosive, they are at least consistent.

The Chiefs have scored at least 19 points in each of the last three games. That might not sound like much, but they hadn’t managed that meager feat since the 2006 season.

They’re in no mood to head back to what they were before Johnson’s absence.

“We’re settled now at the quarterback position,” Gailey said. “We’ve got some continuity on the offensive line. A lot of things have worked positively together for us in the last few weeks to give us at least a better direction. The plan is for Larry to add to that, not subtract from that.”

Obviously, Johnson is coming back to a different world, beginning with today’s game against New Orleans at Arrowhead Stadium. Coach Herm Edwards wouldn’t even say whether Johnson would start today.

“He’ll be part of it,” Edwards said. “I think he understands that. He knows that is what we do now. It’s nothing against him, nothing against anybody. I think you adjust to what your players do well. I think what we had to learn — and what we knew all the time, even in the preseason — is that (Thigpen) felt comfortable in (the spread) situation. If it’s about the system and not the players, you end up going down the wrong road. You start out with a system, but the system has to be adjusted to the players you have. Tyler feels very comfortable in what he’s doing and, I think, has given us the best opportunity to move the ball, get first downs and score. We’re rolling that way and not turning back.

“(Johnson will) be fine. He’s a good runner, and we’ll do some things with him in the backfield. He’s another offensive weapon for us. We’re not going to change what we do for the next seven weeks, and hopefully we’ll improve on it.”

As always with Johnson, the issue has many layers. The Chiefs, before his NFL suspension, indicated that Johnson hadn’t been in any frame of mind to be preparing for and playing in football games.

His legal troubles are still pending, so has that changed? Johnson didn’t answer questions last week.

And how will Johnson react to being a lesser part of the offense? Will he pout and drag his teammates down with him?

There is little doubt that the Chiefs’ running game has plenty of room for growth. Even as the offense has improved with Thigpen, the Chiefs were only able to get much done when running the ball two weeks ago against Tampa Bay.

In San Diego last week, the Chiefs lacked so much confidence in their runners that they handed to a back just 16 times in a game in which they seldom trailed.

Thigpen, meanwhile, tried 41 passes. That’s hardly what a Herm Edwards offense is expected to look like, so the Chiefs could certainly use Johnson.

“Where they are offensively has a lot to do with the fact Larry wasn’t available to them,” said former Baltimore coach Brian Billick, the Fox TV analyst for today’s game. “If he’s coming back to them, I would be very surprised if they did not indeed come back a little bit to what he does best. He’s still probably their best player next to Tony Gonzalez. I’m not sure they won’t get back to the ‘I’ and do some of those things he does best.

“That’s not to say Larry Johnson can’t fit into what they’re doing. I’d just be surprised if Herm went another game with (16) rushes. I’m sure he’s looking for a more balanced attack.”

Johnson had a couple of 100-plus-yard games early in the season. But even when things were going well, he seemed to have a most uneasy alliance with the Chiefs. Edwards and Gailey removed Johnson from the lineup on third downs and at other important junctures.

The Chiefs obviously aren’t comfortable with Johnson as a pass blocker and think Jamaal Charles is a more dangerous receiver.

At times, the Chiefs have been guilty of signaling their intentions with personnel. They would most often run when Johnson was in the game and pass when he wasn’t.

For his part, Johnson would get frustrated with a role that left him standing on the sideline at crucial times. He publicly accused the Chiefs of phasing him out of their plans after a 12-carry, 22-yard performance in a September loss to the Raiders.

“The problem with Larry Johnson is that you just don’t know if you’re going to get the 65-yard run and the 200 yards he got against (Denver), or are you going to get the two yards he got the next game?” said former Dallas personnel director Gil Brandt. “Larry Johnson can still be a productive player. But can he be a consistently productive player?”

The way the Chiefs are currently trying to run the ball is completely different and something Johnson hasn’t been trained to do.

“When you’re in the shotgun, the back is going sideways when he gets the ball,” Gailey said. “Some guys are more comfortable doing it that way, especially those guys that have come into the league in the last four or five years that have been doing that every snap (in college). There’s a learned skill to that, just like there is everything else.

“It’s not like we reinvented the wheel. I think he has the ability to adjust to just about anything. We’re trying to find that good combination of being able to run the spread offense and get a good enough running game. The hard part is to try to mesh the run game with that if you’re not running the quarterback, which you don’t want to do.”

Johnson has always been a straight-ahead, power runner, so he has some adapting to do if the Chiefs are going to give him the ball out of the shotgun. They could put Thigpen directly under center and have him hand the ball to Johnson that way. They could have two game plans, one for Johnson and another when he’s not in the game.

No matter what they do, it requires an adjustment for the Chiefs or Johnson or both. How well they adjust will determine not only whether this offensive revival continues, but also the path of Johnson’s career.

“We didn’t have enough runs out of the shotgun early, and now we’ve added some runs to it,” Edwards said. “We’ve been pretty successful in moving the ball, in the first half anyway, and scoring points. That’s helped our defense because we’ve been able to stay on the field.

“Now, that’s kind of what we are. We didn’t start out that way and have been forced to do it. But we were a little bit smart enough to figure out what (Thigpen) can do, so why not play to the guy’s strength? He is the quarterback. The quarterback is important because he moves the team. That’s kind of where we’re at offensively.”