After the second game of the season, Titans running back Chris Johnson answered a question about his piddling production by saying that people on the offense needed to do their jobs if he was going to be successful.
It wasn’t hard to guess which players Johnson thought were falling short. The finger was pointed at the offensive line, something that some thought was less than charitable given how little Johnson was able to do even when the blocking did give him a chance to gain yardage.
Johnson finally flashed some of his old skills in Sunday’s otherwise dismal 38-14 loss to the Texans. After the game, Johnson again pointed the finger at his blockers but he did it in order to point out how good a job they did opening up holes. It might have fallen short of LeRoy Harris’ skewed self-assessment, but it was still an appropriate response from Johnson.
“Yeah, it was a pretty good game, running the ball or whatever,” Johnson said, via Jim Wyatt of the Tennessean. “I feel like my offensive line went out there and did a great job from the first snap. Just getting up on guys, pushing those guys back, recreating the line of scrimmage and just giving me somewhere to run. Like I’ve been saying all year, I’m going to be as good as my offensive line.”
Johnson finished the day with 141 yards on 25 carries, a very positive development for the Titans offense that they’ll need to replicate if they want to improve on their 1-3 start to the season. Johnson said he doesn’t think the team has totally solved the problems with the ground game from the first three weeks, but it should be far easier to build on what’s working than trying to come up with a solution to something that keeps malfuctioning.