Why did the Miami Dolphins think bringing in Chad Johnson was a good idea in the first place?
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FILE - This June 19, 2012 file photo shows Miami Dolphins player Chad Ochocinco, who recently changed his name back to Chad Johnson, talking to the media after NFL practice in Davie, Fla. The Dolphins terminated the six-time Pro Bowl receiver's contract about 24 hours after he was arrested in a domestic battery case involving his wife. Johnson was released from jail on $2,500 bond earlier Sunday, Aug. 12, 2012, after his wife accused him of head-butting her during an argument in front of their home. By David Steele
AOL FanHouse Columnist
This summer’s “Hard Knocks” peek into the Miami Dolphins is only one episode old, yet that one episode raised an obvious question that HBO viewers had asked long before, and wondered why the Dolphins had not asked it, too.
Why did they think bringing in Chad Johnson was a good idea in the first place?
In that first hour, Johnson had burst into a coaches’ meeting unannounced, sat down for a few minutes, then left—with the coaches’ expressions, including new head coach Joe Philbin’s, somewhere between baffled and appalled.
They also had been shown angrily reacting to Johnson’s initial press conference, laced with profanity and including a reference to a future porn career. Finally, Philbin was shown lecturing Johnson about his early actions and his responsibilities.
Those were just the interactions of the new wide receiver with his new team—not the ones with his newlywed wife; more on that soon. Nary a one of them should have been a surprise to anyone aware of the existence of the NFL over the last decade. Particularly not to the management and coaching staff of an NFL franchise.
Chad Johnson, in all his incarnations, has been a clown from Day One. He was a very talented and productive clown for a decade, and in the grand scheme of things, he was a fairly harmless clown. An endless repertoire of end-zone celebrations hardly made him a menace to society; the worst thing is that it overshadowed how many times he was getting into the end zone in his prime.
None of that obscured what a clown he is.
He’s no longer productive, though. Now, officially, according to police in Florida, where he faces domestic violence charges, he’s no longer harmless, either. Off-field criminal activity was never part of his persona, but the diminished skill and the excessive, disproportionate drama has been common knowledge for at least a couple of years.
Somehow, the Dolphins—if not the very last team in the NFL which can afford any of this in its rebuild-almost-from-Square-One status, then one of the very last—missed this about Johnson.
Or they willingly overlooked it.
Either way, they are now reaping what they sow.
They may not want to admit it. In fact, Philbin was as elusive on that as Johnson ever was on any pass route. But it’s time for them to realize that if Johnson has blatantly exposed himself as more of a clown than he ever has been, that the Dolphins’ organization is wearing an ever bigger, brighter red nose than their former wideout.
Since Johnson’s arrest Saturday night—according to the police report, for head-butting his wife in an argument in their car, injuring her enough to send her to the hospital—and his subsequent release the next night, some have wondered whether the Dolphins overreacted by cutting him loose with so much about the incident still cloudy.
Their decision is questionable, for sure. The real question, though, is this: With a lengthy track record of buffoonery, a recent track record of being a lousy player and proof already of distracting behavior during that small window of training camp, what made this the straw that broke their backs?
Naturally, Philbin on Monday morning said that no, it was not the arrest that pushed them over the edge. “It was not reactive, nor was it based on one single incident,” he said, adding that many in the organization had input in it, based on “criteria that supports our organizational goals … on and off the field.”
Uh-oh, more questions, guys. What on- and off-field criteria supported signing Johnson in the first place?
Was it those 15 catches last season in New England, as part of one of the most prolific offenses in league history? The utter lack of interest by any other NFL team after the Patriots dumped him? His age (34), 11 years of wear-and-tear and, lately, decreasing effectiveness?
Or did his increasing love affair with himself at the expense of the sport that made him famous sway you? His ratio of catches-to-reality-show connections hardly made him a bargain. (He’s working on his fifth in roughly two-and-a-half years, this one with his wife, the alleged victim of his assault and, of course, a reality-show “star’’ herself.)
In a league in a major wide-receiver drought—Terrell Owens is back working, and Plaxico Burress is now getting tryouts—Johnson might have been done for good had Miami not brought him in. He’s almost certainly done now.
Johnson’s last job destroyed his career and his reputation. The Dolphins might have suffered even more damage in taking on the risk with him.
Referring to the day the Dolphins signed Johnson, Philbin said his release was based on “more of a body of evidence from June 11 forward.”
Basing it on the body of evidence from June 11 backwards would have been a lot smarter.