I’m genuinely shocked by the comments defending Lane Johnson. Maybe, in my haste to get another post up yesterday, I cited the wrong Tweets and quotes to make my point. Let me try out these, most of which were conveninetly cut from the video of Johnson’s presser on the Eagles’ website, probably because they make him look like a petulant tool.

From CSN:

On the power struggle with Roseman that Kelly always tried to downplay:
“I think definitely the power struggle, that’s what I think the biggest thing was. The power struggle, the front office, I don’t think they were happy. Chip and Howie weren’t happy together, didn’t deal well. Just a lot of tension up there that didn’t need to happen, because when you throw it up there it does trickle down to the team, and the team knows what’s going on. It’s just a negative energy that doesn’t need to exist.

Shut up. It makes for nice headlines and such, but blaming an insular power struggle way above your pay grade for, oh, I don’t know, being sixth in the league in total penalties and second in pre-snap penalties is about as childish as it gets:

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Was Chip’s practice schedule too grueling?
“I definitely think so. We practice pretty much the same from OTAs until the end of the season. There’s not a lot of the guys in the league that do that, continuous. It takes a toll on you, especially me, I expect a lot from myself so I’ve hit it hard since January, go out with (Jason Peters), bust some ass, and by the end of the year I feel like I’m gonna fall apart.”

“It takes a toll on you, especially me.” Especially me. Tells you all you need to know right there– if it’s not good for Lane Johnson, it’s not good for anyone, apparently.

From Marcus Hayes(!):

“Maybe the ego got in the way,” Johnson said. “Too much power. Control. Not being human about things; not working together, with the team, instead of being a dictator.”

Welcome to the NFL, Lane, where the coach, who often makes less than you, the player, is your boss and has to tell you how to do things. Maybe, just maybe, entitlement got in the way, and if some of the soft prima donnas on the 2015 Eagles had been willing to swallow their pride for six months, the team would be better than 6-9.

“Get back to a more traditional style of offense,” Johnson said. “I’ve been running this tempo (bleep) since college. I’m pretty damned tired. It takes a toll on you. You do it over a period of time, a lot of guys in this league aren’t going to last . . . Bigger guys, it’s harder on your joints. A lot of pounding. Your hips. Your back. All you’re doing is torquing all day.”

All your doing is torquing? Come on. Once again, it’s not good for Lane and his body type, so it must not work. Maybe some PEDs are in order.

Interestingly, all these comments about the pounding the pace takes fail to mention that Chip and his crew monitored the movement and vital signs of each player and, as reported, often noticed little blips in performance before the player himself or, in this case, herself.

From a Grantland article in 2014:

Kelly’s team uses the latest wearable player-tracking technology, and his staff monitors the resulting data in real time to determine how players should train and when they become injury risks. “On an individualized basis we may back off,” Kelly said recently. “We may take [tight end] Brent Celek out of a team period on a Tuesday afternoon and just say, because of the scientific data we have on him, ‘We may need to give Brent a little bit of a rest.’ We monitor them very closely.”

I’m not defending Chip in criticizing Lane, however. The criticisms (of Chip) are fair, and it’s now clear there was a personality issue that wasn’t conducive to running an NFL locker room. Part of that was he may have demanded too much, and didn’t do a good enough job of explaining the why, or being open to suggestion. But I fail to see where Lane Johnson is some sort of hero for speaking out. He was just one of several disappointing big-name players this season, one who routinely left you wanting to punch your own foot after a drive-killing penalty. And it’s the same guy who was suspended four games at the start of last season for PED use, and who needlessly ripped fans earlier in the year. The body of work on Johnson – cheater, dumbass penalties, ripping fans and departed coach – does nothing for me to give him the benefit of the doubt and say “oh, he’s just telling it like it is.” It sounds a lot more like whining after the fact to me.