The Insanity of Trading Chris Johnson

When you combine the need to meet minimum blog post requirements with some unfortunate reasoning, you come up with this gem from Gerald Ball at the Bleacher Report. In short, Ball says the Titans should trade “knucklehead” Chris Johnson, preferably for Marques Colston or maybe even DeSean Jackson if the Eagles decide they’d like their new starting quarterback to fail miserably.  Trading Chris Johnson is most definitely dumb, however, we all know Johnson’s personality is a bit, out there.  The question is, does it matter?

It’s kind of like The Chad Johnson Phenomenon: a comedian-athlete is only funny when he’s producing.  When the Bengals were awful again and “Is Chad washed up?” was the topic of discussion, calling him Ochocinco was just kind of annoying.  Then the Bengals come back with a good year, he makes the Pro Bowl, and now he’s more popular than ever.  What punching his coach in the face incident??? So when CJ is out there challenging Usain Bolt in his free time and demanding all the money in the world, we’re annoyed.  But if he were to come to practice tomorrow, honor his contract, and make the 2011 Pro Bowl, there’ll be no complaints when he legally changes his name to Every Coach’s Dream.

I came to grips with Chris Johnson’s personality a long, long time ago and it’s about time Titans fans do too.  He’s Lil’ Wayne with speed and a juke move.  Do I ever under any circumstances want to hear Lil’ Wayne talk about anything for an extended period of time? No. Do I want to know what he’s doing at any given time? No.  But will I listen to a Lil’ Wayne song?  Sometimes.  Athletes are extremely accessible in the Twitter Era, but that doesn’t mean all of them can handle the access (see: Larry Johnson) or that we should want to talk to them just because they play football.

I’m going out on a limb to say there’s nothing Chris Johnson does as well as he plays football, and that includes thinking.  You know who else can’t think very well?  Emmitt Smith.  Emmitt Smith also was a holdout at some point, and it actually lasted into the season.  Emmitt Smith was also a three-time Super Bowl champion.  Emmitt spent a couple years at ESPN proving the importance of the high school English class we all thought was pointless, but he also proves you don’t need a genius in your backfield to win a Super Bowl.

To trade a once-in-a-lifetime talent like CJ just because he’s not Myron Rolle is pretty much clown shoes.  CJ’s little holdout has had absolutely no negative impact on the team.  Teammates understand the business, and Coach Fisher is still cracking jokes.

So it looks like we’re all stuck with the Offensive Player of the Year, multiple NFL record-holder, and the only reason we have a chance to be successful this year.