Chris Johnson: Should we let him go?

Chris Johnson, plain and simple:

Johnson has amassed over his career 7,965 rush yards with an average of 4.6 yards per carry. He is one of six players to rush for 2,000 yards and has never posted a season with less than 1,000 yards.  All of these statistics are impressive but apparently to Titan fans not enough to convince them CJ should stay in Nashville. But these are not his most important stats, he has done something many greats have not be able to do.  In seven years of being a workhorse he as missed one game, which was in 2008.  Adrian Peterson, Lesean
Mccoy, Frank Gore, Matt Forte, and so on and so forth can not say the same.

Chris Johnson has dreads, tattoos, and a grill but does that make him a diva? He asked for the ball in clutch situations of the game does that make him a selfish player? He gets a bad wrap for nothing at all.  He is durable, electric, hard working, and one of the best players to lace up his cleats EVERY Sunday in Titan history but we the fans want him gone. Why? Durability is something that does not have a monetary value and when your floor is a thousand yards, the Titans should feel lucky to have a RB of that pedigree.

Have we Titan fans been so blind to the league that we want change for the sake of change? Look at Jamaal Charles and Lesean Mccoy this season. How was Mccoy succes
sful? Answer, heavy dose of outside zone running from spread formations which allowed him to get into the secondary and be himself.  Jamaal Charles was used spectacularly by Andy Reid, in the passing and running game, how 'bout them Raiders Jamaal? These teams have coaches that specialize in offensive strategy and get their players in great positions to succeed, the Titans however do not. I can guarantee you and all of the Titans fans if we had Mccoy and ran him the same as CJ he would have had about 1,077 yards this season.  It is insane to run a small, fast, and nimble running back into 300 pound linemen and ask him to plow over them every time.  This season I watched every one of the Titans' 16 games and I can't count the number of times I cursed at Loggains and Munchack for running CJ right up the middle, that's Shonn Greene's job, let CJ get on the outside and outrun people! Here are two examples of my point.

66 yard TD catch

Chris Johnson catches a short pass and takes it to the house for a 66 yard touchdown against the 49ers defense.  Why did this work? He got past the defensive linemen and made everyone else look foolish with speed. So why did the Titans continue to run him up the middle? Why not try something new? He did the same thing on a fluke flip from Fitzpatrick against Kansas City and took it 49 yards for a TD.

Chris Johnson is our best player. We should have been catering the offense to him all season and let Locker play against loaded boxes. I do believe that was the plan but locker got hurt. That is poor luck and created a team that was even more one dimensional. Shonn Green ran for 3.8 yards per carry and Chris Johnson ran for 3.9 yards per carry. Without Locker and a line that underachieved why blame Johnson? Both running backs had the same issues. Remember that last two games of the season, now think about a torn meniscus, now think about someone who was injured but rather than sit out, kept it quiet and ran as hard as ever, that sounds like a player I want on my team.  He took criticism for having a down season and rather than blame his knee he let his reputation take the hit. We all blamed him. He is a tough man and we need him if we ever want to win a Superbowl for Bud.

If Ken Whisenhunt is really an offensive genius then he should embrace the opportunity to use Chris Johnson as a weapon.  Our problems are at QB right now.  Teams simply line up 8 or 9 men boxes to stop CJ because they understand he can kill them. The focus on Johnson gives our wide receivers a lot of one on one match-ups, which Kendall Wright did well with, but we had a terribly inconsistent QB in Fitzpatrick and became one dimensional. We don't have a problem at RB why would we cut the most durable RB in the league and create another position that we have to fix. Let's fix the QB situation, let Locker compete with a rookie and if Locker gets hurt we will have someone to build on and if not hopefully Locker can get back to the success he had early on in the years, when CJ was averaging 90 yards per game. If our QB can have average success and CJ gets used as the superstar that he is, with our young, talented, WRs we can easily be a playoff team. I mean we were one game out with horrible coaching, a back up QB, and some bad luck. #KeepCJ2K