Q&A LJ

[Wile_E_Coyote]

Q&A RB Larry Johnson

Dec 16, 2004, 3:18:10 PM


Q: What does winning the Snickers Hungriest Player award and a $1,000 check to the charity of your choice mean to you?


JOHNSON: “It’s just a stepping stone for maybe next season and game after game. It’s a great award and I’m definitely going to give it to the JPD, which is the NFL’s Junior Player Development. There are a lot of kids that love to play football, want to play football, but just don’t have the equipment to do it. So hopefully the schools that need that type of equipment can use that check.”

Q: Can you say what getting your first start means to you?

JOHNSON: “It means a lot, but I thought it meant a lot at the beginning of the season and what happens if I get to start and I’d be all excited. But as of now it’s just going out there and being able playing well and continue to play well. I don’t think starting has really hit me yet until I actually get there and be the first one out there. I don’t think it’s going to hit me until game time.”

Q: Is it nice to start seeing rewards after having some success?

JOHNSON: “It’s great, but coming out of college it was the same way. You just have to learn how to handle it. I think I’ve handled it fairly well. They always give you good things when you’re doing well. When you come into an opportunity and situation like I have, nobody says anything to you. I’m taking this as the same situation I just came out of. Just keep moving on and hopefully getting better week by week.”

Q: What do you say to the comment anybody can run well behind the Chiefs offensive line?

JOHNSON: “Those offensive line guys are great. And those receivers did an excellent job keeping those extra DBs off of me. All I had to do was make one guy miss. Talent alone can’t get you that far into the secondary unless you have guys in front of you who are willing to block for you.”

Q: Do you think you always have to go out and prove yourself?

JOHNSON: “Always. I feel that as much as there are a lot of people that support me, there is also another handful that don’t. It may be one guy, maybe two guys, but that’s who I really concentrate on to see if I can change his or her mind about me. I think that’s what I really concentrate on because no matter how well you do, there is always going to be somebody to say you can’t do this again and you can’t do that. That’s what I mainly focus on when I go into this week’s game.”

Q: Do you have an, “I told you so” feeling?

JOHNSON: “The funny thing is I wrote that when they gave me the horse trailer. They told me to sign it and I put that on the thing I had to sign. ‘I told you so.’ That was just me kidding around. My dad watched the television version when we played on Monday night against St. Louis (9/23) and John Madden made a couple comments. My dad said that he didn’t say anything much about me this game. It’s kind of like what I felt the whole time, but it wasn’t enough to say ‘I told you so’. I knew I could do it, but the opportunity had to be there for me to prove so.”

Q: Who were you saying “I told you so” to?

JOHNSON: “Oh, just people in general. Anybody and everybody who said I was slow, that I couldn’t do it, I didn’t hit the holes fast enough. Hopefully I changed their minds, but if not then I guess I have to go out there another week and try to do it again.”

Q: Do you feel like you have an interesting kinship with Carl Peterson?

JOHNSON: “He’s been really excited. He was even more excited before the game because he came up to me and said a lot of things. Then after the game he was really excited and real happy for me. I think it’s really a testament on his part because I did stick his neck out on me. For him to take a lot of heat for drafting me, I feel like I did it some justice and prove to everybody that he made a right decision.”

Q: Have the expectations been raised for you now?

JOHNSON: “It doesn’t matter to me. I know what I expect. I came to Kansas City to help and be a backup to Priest Holmes. That’s what my initial plan was. Now of course things have changed, but I’m not going to live up to somebody else’s expectations, I’m going to live up to my own. I know what I have to do Sunday in my own mind to feel like I did something.”

Q: Why is it important for the Chiefs to win these last few games?

JOHNSON: “Because we have to have something to hang our hat on at the end of the season. We don’t want to end the season thinking we lost and they say well this has been a losing season and then take that into spring workouts and training. We’re going to come out and win every single last one of these last games and say, ‘Okay now we know we can improve.’ We can take that into summer camp and hopefully preseason.”

Q: So nobody in that locker room cares about draft position?

JOHNSON: “I don’t think anybody cares. We basically want to go out there and do what we can do now. We can’t worry about April. Everybody know you can’t control April. We can control what we do against Denver on Sunday.”

Q: Are you having fun with football?

JOHNSON: “I’m more focused and know what I have to do. I poke fun here and there, but that’s the only time I get to laugh. The other time I’m in meetings and everything is so serious. You know how crucial it is. That one slip up, one mistake and it’s not going to be funny. You’ve got to look at a situation where you’re dealing with somebody like Trent (Green) and you’re dealing with his health. Any hit could end his career or anybody else’s, so you take everything real serious until the season is over. Then I can go have my fun.”

Q: Do you think your pass-protection skills have improved?


JOHNSON: “Yeah, I’m feeling a little bit more comfortable with myself going into that situation. All it is, is just recognition and knowing where guys are coming from and how hard they are going to hit you. That just comes from watching more and more tape and that’s what I’ve been doing this week, trying to figure out what guy is going to pass-rush me hard and what guy is not. That’s what’s really the key to being successful in pass blocking.”