Two teams I often have trouble handicapping are Houston and Tennessee (Seriously, if you have any tips on how to pick these two teams or Chicago I am all ears). Houston is a two-faced team. Sometimes their offense looks like it can hang with any other unit in the league – like the Saints game this year where they feel just short while putting up 33. Other days they are just flat – they already have a home loss to the lowly Raiders this year (yes they are the lowly Raiders whatever their record says).
Tennessee also never seems to be the same team in back-to-back weeks. The confusing part is it never seems to be a particular kind of team that is able to stop them. This year alone they have pounded the Ravens and then been demolished by the Steelers, two very similar teams. They have also lost to Jacksonville and beaten Cleveland. Both road matches against low power, semi-defensive teams.
What I expected this week was Tennessee to realize the importance of their home game against division rival Houston and to come out and have their play reflect the meaning of the game. The victor would grab top spot in a two-team division, and Houston comes into this match severely battered. With Andre Johnson out it seemed like teams just needed to limit the powerful Texans run game and their offense would struggle. I did not think this would be too tough a task for a Titan defense that was playing like a top five unit so far this year.
Instead it was the Texans who took Chris Johnson out of the game and watched the Tennesse offense fall apart. I did not watch much of this game because it was not close seemingly from the start, but I have seen enough of Chris Johnson in recent weeks to form an opinion. He just doesn’t have it, and I will stop just short of saying “he sucks”. I am sure he still has his speed to blow defenders out once he gets into open field but with the way he is running I don’t see how that is going to happen again. Johnson saunters up to the line as if he is expecting a giant running lane to appear any moment. When it does not he slows down his feet and either waits for a defender to penetrate and hit him or he gives up on waiting and crashes into the first person he sees for a two yard gain. Right now he is not difficult to stop.
Johnson is not the entire problem. Against Houston he finished with 18 yards on 10 carries. Even the 4th string running back would get more yards than that if the O-line was going its job correctly. But Johnson is not part of the solution. Everything about his game is hesitant. Even though he is a speed back Johnson separated himself from other speed backs in the past by being able to run with power, often able to take on the first tackle head on while seemingly never breaking stride. Now that he is running half speed he can not even generate any of that power.
What really gave Johnson his power though was his fantastic 2009 season. Rushing for 2000 yards will do that. But if that performance was merely a really good performance instead of a truly great performance do we think of him as the same back today? Probably not. More importantly, what will he look like as this season goes along? I hate to make this comparison but I think it needs to be done. One monster fantasy season for another.
Player A
year 1: 251 carries, 1228 yards, 4.9 avg. 9 TD’s
year 2: 358 carries, 2006 yards, 5.6 avg. 14 TD’s
year 3: 316 carries, 1364 yards, 4.3 avg. 11 TD’s
Player B
year 1: 144 carries, 717 yards, 5.0 avg. 4 TD’s
year 2: 273 carries, 1515 yards, 5.5 avg. 18 TD’s
year 3: 216 carries, 1117 yards, 5.2 avg. 7 TD’s
Player A is obviously Chris Johnson. Player B is DeAngelo Williams. From a fantasy perspective he is another player that was drafted as a first round running back in year 3 because of a monster performance the prior season. And his fantasy owner was similarly disappointed in his results that season. Chris Johnson was even drafted as a first round back this year because of his performance two years ago. As for DeAngelo we know how his year four and five have played out. In year four he played six games with a mediocre 4.1 yards per carry. Currently in year five he is performing solidly but he is not even close to being the best RB on his own team.
What does this say about Chris Johnson? More than anything I think it says that it is tough to stay at the top. At some point we need to question if Chris Johnson is doing all he can to try to stay there.