Chris Johnson says he’s the best back in the NFL

Chris Johnson had an off year last year and he’s aiming to let people know that it was a fluke. After dealing with a holdout and nagging injuries Johnson averaged a meager 4.0 yards per carry. He now feels as if he’s being dismissed by media and fans. But Johnson isn’t lacking for confidence. He still feels he’s the best back in the league.


“I feel I am still the best back in the league, and I have no problem saying that. None of the active backs have done anything that I have done in the first four years, even though I had a bad year last year. So I still feel like I am the best back in the league.”


The NFL Network’s top 100 list had a lot to do with what Johnson is saying after being ranked behind players like Darren Sproles, Marshawn Lynch, Willis McGahee, and Vonta Leach.


“I know it is one of those ‘What have you done for me lately?’ situations,” Johnson said. “People are not going to look at me as the No. 1 running back in the league. There are people out there who aren’t going to give me the respect I deserve. But at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks.


 “There’s a lot of backs now who probably didn’t do anything the year before and then they rush for 1,500 yards and they are the top back,” Johnson said. “It’s crazy, really.”


There are players like Ray Rice and Arian Foster that might have something to say about Johnson laying claim to the top spot.

Johnson does have the stats to back up his claim including a 2,000 yard season. I feel he’s still top five but is in a dogfight for top back status. Johnson says he wants to put together another 2,000 yard season to separate himself from the pack.    

“I want to go for another 2,000 yards,” Johnson said. “I want to be the first back to go for 2,000 yards twice, and I think it can be done. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. I think it can be done.”

Eddie George trying to save his house from foreclosure

Former Tennessee Titans star Eddie George received a surprise at his home this week in the form of a foreclosure notice. According to George’s accountant, Larry Goodman, the home is scheduled to be auctioned on June 7.

Goodman had been negotiating a loan modification with IndyMac Mortgage Services over the past seven months.

The Georges bought the 8,550-square-foot home in the gated Brentwood, Tenn., community of Hampton Reserve at the height of the market. They currently owe more than what the house is worth. They bought it for $1.675 million in September 2007 and recently listed the home for sale for $1.1 million.

“Because the loan and equity is not in balance where it should be, we want to go through a loan modification process,” Goodman said.


IndyMac hasn’t discussed modifying the terms when the payments were current so George has intentionally missed four or five payments to get the ball rolling on negotiations. The Georges love living in the home and are surprised by the foreclosure.

“We’re not trying to walk away from anything,” Goodman said. “They love living there. It’s a great house. Like anybody else who buys an expensive house, it flipped on him.”


Don’t confuse the foreclosure with George being broke. Goodman says George and his family are financially stable and are in no danger of going broke. They’re just like any other American homeowner who is trying to get out from under some bad terms regarding their house.

George has a landscaping business with offices in Ohio and Nashville. He also appeared on sports related television shows.

Tamara George was part of the singing group Sisters With Voices, or SWV, during the 1990s and recently released a new cd. She later appeared on a season of the television reality series Survivor.

Titans rookie Kendall Wright says Baylor had no playbook

Tennessee Titans rookie receiver Kendall Wright will be learning to do something that he never learned in college. Reading a playbook. Not that he has a learning disability or anything like that, it’s just that he never had to read on while he was at Baylor.

Wright says Baylor coach Art Briles never used a playbook and they didn’t huddle, opting for signals instead.

“At Baylor we didn’t huddle. Everything we did was coming off of signals and off the sideline,” Wright said. “We didn’t huddle at Baylor and we didn’t have a playbook. If we had a new play or something, we’d just draw it and go out there and run it.

“I think I memorized over 300 plays at Baylor. … We had a lot of plays. We just didn’t have a playbook. Coach Briles is a very smart man,” Wright said. “It was the same system. We were in that system for four years. It’s kind of a different kind of learning deal. We’d see it visually and we’d just go run it. It just sticks with us when we keep running it a lot.


“We’d watch film and go over a lot of it in our meetings that we had. We’d have a lot of plays on the board, and have different signals. Whatever the signal was would tell us the play.”


Wright knows he’ll have to adjust to offensive coordinator Chris Palmer’s complex playbook but with the memory he has it might not be as bad as the adjustment some rookies have.


“We didn’t have paper at Baylor. We have paper now. There’s a lot of different wordings that tell you what to do differently for things like that,” Wright said. “I think we’re the only team that didn’t have a playbook.”

Tulloch and Vanden Bosch say there wasn’t a bounty program in Tennessee

With the NFL focusing on bountygate, it seems that everyone is trying to find a connection from the past. Any coach or player that played for Gregg Williams has had their credentials questioned.

Detroit Lions head coach, Jim Schwartz, coached under Williams in Tennessee while both were with the Titans. During the week, Schwartz did say they ran an awards system in Tennessee for big hits. Not a cash bounty system like the New Orleans Saints were busted for earlier this month.

Current Lions players, linebacker Stephen Tulloch and defensive end Kyle Vanden Bosch deny any bounty system was being ran in Tennessee.

“I’ve never been a part of that in my career,” Tulloch said. “I think it’s unreal, man, to go out and have in your mind you want to take somebody’s career out. You have to look at it like people are trying to feed their family. To go out with the mindset of taking them out is not right.”


Cornerback Reynaldo Hill, who played for Schwartz from 2005-08, told The Tennessean, “There was never any talking about hurting another team’s quarterback.


“That’s a lie. I never heard anything like that. There never was a bounty; that is crazy.”  

Schwartz said they gave out boxing gloves or a lacquered and engraved baseball bat to the weekly winner, but if they were penalized for the hit they couldn’t win the award.

If you ask former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy if the Titans ran a system similar to the Saints, he’ll tell you otherwise.

It’s a case of he said/he said and I’m sure that Roger Goodell will have his boys investigating any possible bounty system.

Pacman Calls Fisher/Titans Divorce ‘Dumbest Move Ever’

You would think that when Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones has something to say that it would be a bunch of garbage. However in this instance I can actually see where he’s coming from. Jones seemed to be shocked when he heard that Jeff Fisher and the Tennessee Titans had a mutual parting of the ways. Jones spoke on their relationship and how Fisher tried to make him a better peron.

“I heard they fired Coach Fisher,” said Adam “Pacman” Jones, “and I was like, ‘What?! We had kind of a father-son relationship, he was hard on me, but he let me know he was there for me.”

I guess a lot of people never knew about how Fisher tried hard to keep Jones on the right track and had some kind of special kinship.

“He never turned his back on me,” said Jones. “He came to my house several times. I could go to him and talk to him about anything. And I did. I got to a point in Tennessee where I ran out of options on my own and I turned to him. Coach Fisher was a great person. Great about caring, great about calling. Can’t get any better than him.”

Wow, Jones actually respected Fisher. This I never imagined, probably because of all the off-field problems Jones had, there was the idea that Jones respected no one.

“I have no idea why they [fired him],” he says. “It’s gotta be the dumbest move ever. But that’s how they do things in Tennessee. It can be very weird down there. I still can’t believe it. But you know, things happen. I guess they fired me.”

Very insightful and kinda surprising considering the character he’s exhibited in the past. I know I was also surprised when I heard that Fisher was stepping down. I look for him to take a Bill Cowher type of abscene adn wind up on one of the studio shows.

 

Randy Moss Claimed By Titans

Reports are that the Tennessee Titans have claimed Randy Moss off waivers. This could be good since they recently lost Kenny Britt and now have a big play receiver to compliment running back Chris Johnson. Or this could go down in flames if Moss decides he doesn’t want to play. If he doesn’t it could ruin Vince Young. Just my personal opinion of the situation.

Legarrette Blount Still Has That Fighting Spirit

After supposedly learning his lesson after punching a Boise State player last year, Legarrette Blount is at it again. That punch lowered his draft stock and cost him most of his senior season, also a whole lot of money.

After Blount’s helmet was taken off for the second time in a goal line drill defensive end Eric Bakhtiari got in his face and Blount retaliated with a punch. This is standard training camp fare so this might not be as costly. Unless Jeff Fisher thinks he hasn’t changed and it costs Blount a roster spot. He did apologize to Fisher and Fisher stated that he wasn’t disappointed.

Blount looked like he was ready to go. I think he needs to go to some kind of counseling or something. In my opinion it looks like he hasn’t learned anything from his last mistake and from stories that were put out, the Boise State incident wasn’t the first time. Maybe he can look up Ron Artest’s doc.

Kiffin keeps pissing off Tennessee

USC head coach has once again pissed off someone in Tennessee. This time for stealing away Tennesse Titans running backs coach Kennedy Pola. From USC alum and Titans head coach Jeff Fisher. It’s not the point that Pola left for a lateral job move. It’s the fact that Kiffin hired him away without asking Fisher for permission to talk to him about the job. Now the Titans are staring at going into camp without a running backs coach. The reason why the Trojans need one is because former coach Todd McNair was the fall guy in the cheating scandal.

Pola, who also is an USC alum,and played and coached for the Trojans, is also the uncle of former Trojan and current Pittsburgh Steeler Troy Polamalu. I have no problem with Pola going somewhere that he feels he advance his coaching career. But the way this went down, I don’t know if he will get another shot on an NFL coaching staff. Not after leaving one of the longest tenured coaches in the league today. Jeff Fisher is none too pleased with how this all went down.

“I am very disappointed in Lane Kiffin’s approach to this,” Fisher said on Saturday. “Typically speaking, when coaches are interested in hiring or discussing potential employment from coaches on respective staffs there is a courtesy call made from the head coach or athletic director indicating there is an interest in talking to the assistant.

“So I am very disappointed in the lack of professionalism on behalf of Lane, to call me and leave me a voice mail after Kennedy had informed me he had taken the job. It is just a lack of professionalism.”

Word is, that Pola wasn’t Kiffin’s first choice. Eric Bienemy, the running backs coach for the Vikings got a promotion and pay raise to keep this scenario from happening to them. If Kiffin had any friends left in Tennessee, he doesn’t have any now.

Kiffin is now trying to explain another mess he’s created.

“We reached out to Kennedy Pola [on Friday] to gauge whether he had any possible interest in returning to USC before we moved forward with the process,” Kiffin said.

“Kennedy said he would think about it and get back to us today. Once Kennedy did call back earlier today, out of my great respect for Coach Fisher I immediately reached out to Coach to make him aware of the situation. I have spoken with Coach Fisher and he now has an accurate understanding of the timeline of events,” Kiffin said.
I think Kiffin needs to keep his mouth shut and coach since it seems like he can’t do anything on the up and up.

Simms loves his chronic

You would think pro athletes would think that when they smoke marijuana,they’re bound to get caught.The most recent athlete to be made an example of is Tennessee Titans backup quarterback Chris Simms. Simms was stopped early Thursday at a Manhattan police checkpoint with his wife Danielle in tow.

Reports say that Simms’ eyes were bloodshot,smelled like marijuana and slurred his words.Like police won’t pick up that familiar scent.Police said Simms admitted to smoking marijuana before he was stopped.But Simms says he was talking about cigarettes.A likely story.If convicted Simms faces up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.The money he can afford, the jail time, not so much.

Before we all rush to judgement,remember this is all alleged.And the marijuana smell could’ve been from two unidentified passengers in the back seat.Haven’t I heard this one before. It’s someone else’s gun,drugs,etc.I’m sure Phil is beaming with pride right now.