Jets running back Chris Johnson’s obviously still confident he can be a great back.
In fact, he thinks he could have been even better his last few years with the Titans except for his play-callers.
“When I was in Tennessee, a lot of the plays when the offensive coordinator was calling them, they were predictable,” Johnson told ESPN.com’s Rich Cimini. “Everybody could tell what was coming. With Marty [Mornhinweg], the plays aren’t predictable.”
Specifically, he was talking about the Chris Palmer and Dowell Loggains years, as he had his best seasons under former Titans coordinator Mike Heimerdinger, who was fired after the 2010 season and died a few months later.
“That was sad, real sad,” Johnson said. “It’s crazy, because after that, I bounced around from all different types of offensive coordinators. It just didn’t work out. ... I had three or four coordinators who just didn’t put me in the right position. They didn’t put me in the right situations.”
Of course, there might have been other issues at play, as former teammate Delanie Walker talked about locker room cancers (though he and Johnson hugged it out via Twitter the next day).
Johnson’s battled some knee injuries of late, but it hardly seems coincidental that he averaged 1,532 yards per season from 2008-10, but just 1,122 from 2011-13.
And while he’s loving Mornhinweg now, we’ll see if the relationship is still as good if he doesn’t revert to his old form.