It’s going to be tough — if not impossible — for this team to carry Clinton Portis, Larry Johnson, and Willie Parker on the roster together. We’ve all known this since training camp. But just because it’s become part of the conventional wisdom of the 2010 preseason doesn’t make it any less strange to hear Kyle Shanahan lay it out as plainly as he did earlier this week.

Kelli Johnson of Comcast SportsNet asked Shanahan the question frankly enough: “Can you really keep three backs, though, that aren’t gonna contribute on special teams?”

And Kyle Shanahan answered with equal frankness: “No,” he said. “That’s always tough. If you have three guys up, one of ‘em’s gotta contribute on special teams.”

If the bluntness was surprising, though, the news wasn’t, even to Johnson and Parker themselves.
“It makes sense,” Johnson said. “It’s hard to dress three backs or four backs — and I include the fullbacks — without having special any special teaming experience. Some guy goes down on special teams and we don’t have that hole to fill ’cause none of us have been working.”

“Yeah,” Parker agreed. “We pretty much know that. We been in this game before. We know what’s up. You can’t keep three guys — you gotta at least have one of ‘em playing special teams. We knew that when we came here. So it’s tough.”

What’s not tough is the solution to this dilemma: “We have to work extra hard just to get a spot on this team, just to make it harder for the coaches to decide if we should keep three, keep four, or keep two,” Johnson said.

And Parker will have another opportunity to make his case tonight, Kyle Shanahan said. “When he did get his chance he didn’t have too many opportunities, similar to Larry the week before that,” Shanahan explained. “So we’re gonna try to give him more chances, a few more runs this week.”

Parker is ready to do his part — in the running game, at least. “Definitely not on special teams,” he said, with a rueful kind of laugh, “but, yeah, I should be able to get a chance to show myself again.”

The question is if he’ll be able to do enough. “Hope so,” Parker said. “That’s the only thing I’m banking on. I hope so.”

Larry Johnson got his wish on Friday, some extra playing time to help make up for his disappointing performance against the Ravens the week before. “I knew I needed that second game just to feel a little more comfortable going out there against another tough defense and be able to put some things together,” Johnson said, and put some things together he did.

Johnson finished the game with 9 carries for 42 yards and a fifteen-yard catch-and-run on a screen pass for a touchdown, which certainly helps Johnson’s preseason stats as well as his confidence. But Johnson doesn’t seem to think it had much effect on the coaches’ decisions either way. “I think it helped me out, but camp lasts longer than one preseason game.”

Johnson celebrated his touchdown by dunking the ball over the goalposts, which created an attractive picture for Saturday’s Washington Post Sports section (and video, below) but which might have seemed a bit excessive for the fourth quarter of a preseason game.

But Johnson doesn’t see it that way.
“It was all enthusiasm,” Johnson said, shrugging. “I was doing it in practice and in preseason camp just messing around, and then I thought, you know, time was right to do it. If I was gonna soar, I might as well do it now ’cause I don’t know if I’m gonna get a chance to do it again. So I just did it, because, you know, it’s preseason. Have fun.”

The Redskins running game doesn’t seem to have been having a lot of fun this preseason, averaging an anemic-looking 2.9 yards per carry, but Johnson encouraged fans (and other observers) not to worry too much. “Our emphasis wasn’t on the run as of right now,” he said. “I think they wanted to know who could be the step-up receivers and who was gonna be able to back up Galloway and Santana, so I think that’s what they mostly wanted to focus on.”

When the lights come up on Sunday Night Football against the Cowboys on September 12, Johnson predicts that things will look a bit different. “It’s different when you gameplan,” Johnson said, “and obviously you don’t wanna show other teams what your bread and butter packages are, so you definitely gotta go into it with a sense of kinda being sporadic about the playcalling, because you’ve gotta cover some things up that you wanna show against Dallas. I mean, that’s gonna be a big game Sunday night, so we definitely don’t wanna show our hand.”

The gameplanning will be different. The preparations will be different. The roster size will be different, and the significance will be different. But, Johnson said, scoring a game-winning touchdown in a preseason game is one thing that feels almost as good as it does in a regular season game — which further explains his post-touchdown slam dunk.

“If you love playing football, you don’t just stop playing football ’cause it’s the preseason,” Johnson explained. “If you enjoy the game, you love the game, it don’t matter if it’s a scrimmage or you’re playing on the street with your homeboys, you’re gonna show some enthusiasm. That’s all it was.”

The big story in the locker room was, obviously, Albert Haynesworth spouting off again. I am beyond tired of this ongoing drama, so if you want to read about that, check out Rich Campbell’s transcript over at the Free Lance-Star and thrill to the annoyance.

But Haynesworth didn’t really need to speak up, because there were plenty of other negative things to explore in the post-game locker room. Here’s a few.

Chris Wilson’s Head

The final injury of the game, pictured above, was Chris Wilson losing his helmet and writhing in agony during the fourth quarter. “Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you,” Wilson said. I asked how it was, and he shrugged. “It hurts. It hurts a little bit.”

No stitches, he said, “but it’s swelling on me — as you can see.” This was true. There was a knot on Wilson’s head the size of a nine-volt battery, along with a bandage. But Wilson declined to be compared to the most recent major facial injury in the NFL.

“Eli Manning scraped his head,” Wilson explained. “I busted my head. Eli Manning probably had more blood, though.”

(London Fletcher, passing by at this point, noted, “Eli Manning was leaking.”)

Ultimately, though, Wilson said he was fine and dismissed the incident philosophically. “Game ain’t meant to be played without a helmet,” he said.

Then there was….

Larry Johnson’s Rough Night

As I may have mentioned a couple of times in the in-game wrap-ups, Larry Johnson did not impress this evening. He didn’t run well, block well, or catch passes with particular facility. And he was perfectly up front about what he might need to do to make up for it.

“I’m gonna push to play,” Johnson said. “I don’t care if I have to play the fourth quarter of every other game if I have to, to be out there. I wanna get back into a rhythm. Get back into game shape. Get back into gettin’ the ball and stayin’ there for longer periods of time.”

In fact, Johnson — like many of the people whose reactions I saw on Twitter — admitted that this evening’s performance likely negated much of his positive training camp. “I felt personally it set me back a lot,” he said, “because I did go out there and practice hard every day and just try to if it would translate over to today, and obviously it didn’t do that. So I gotta go back, practice even harder, and try to stay on the field a little longer.”

Malcolm Kelly’s Only Appearance This Evening

Wide receiver Malcolm Kelly didn’t play in this evening’s game, still bothered by the hamstring problem that sidelined him for most of training camp. But he did make one appearance: Kelly was, by coincidence, the player pictured on this evening’s game tickets.

“I didn’t know it until yesterday,” Kelly said. “And in a way it was actually really cool, but seeing that on there ….” He trailed off, clearly frustrated at another incidental twist of the knife.

The question, then, was when he would go completely mad with frustration — and, to my surprise, Kelly laughed. “I’m already past that point,” he said, “but I’m careful about keeping it to myself.”

Kareem Moore Suffered A Sprain And A Scare

The worst part about Kareem Moore‘s injury wasn’t the injury itself, which looked fairly innocuous. It was the way Moore’s teammates came over to comfort him, and talk to him, and offer advice; and it was the despondent look on Moore’s face on the sidelines.

So it was actually a relief to see Moore smiling a bit in the otherwise downbeat locker room. “It’s just a minor sprain,” he said. “Everything’s all right.”

But, I observed, he had not looked like everything — or ANYTHING — was all right while he was on the sideline. “I’m just mad,” he explained. “Every year I’ve been here, I hurt myself in the preseason, and I was just mad at myself, y’know, just hoping everything’s gonna be all right.”

The ACL test was negative, the X-ray was negative, and the MRI is scheduled tomorrow. But Moore was optimistic about that — now that he had had a chance to settle down.

“I hate bein’ hurt,” he said. “Goin’ through what I’ve been through, it’s been so long, all the stuff that I’ve been through, and I hate — HATE — being hurt, that’s all. It’s just like, ‘Not again.’”

Last time I wrote about Larry Johnson‘s shoes, the customization on the back read “Truck Stick,” a combined reference to Madden football and Johnson’s bruising running style. Today, it was pointed out to me that his shoes read “Big Payback,” so I figured that a follow-up was in order.

Turns out it may be the second in a series. “I got a couple of ‘em that people haven’t really seen yet,” Johnson told me after practice. (A good practice for him, too. The team was working on installing some goal line stuff, and Johnson was clearly in that mix.)

So, why “Big Payback”?
“When I used to do the music for the Kansas City Chiefs,” Johnson explained, “my favorite song to go out on was James Brown’s ‘Big Payback’. So we would let that song play before we came out, and that’s how that whole thing came out.”

So now you know. (Also, Johnson says he’s won’t involved with the music selections here. “I stay away from that,” he said. “I ain’t earned those stripes yet.”)

Last time we checked in with D.C.-born hip-hop star Wale (pronounced wah-LAY), he was performing a couple of his hits at halftime of the Dallas game in a throwback Redskins jacket. That was back in 2009, as things were cratering out for that star-crossed squad, in a contest that I described at the time as “another disappointing game in a continually disappointing season.”

But it’s 2010 now, time to put the past away and look forward into a brave new future of awesomeness. So when Wale showed up at training camp today, I asked him what he had seen that gave him hope. “I actually haven’t had a chance to see too much,” he said. “But we were trying to get on the field ourselves. You know, I live vicariously through a couple of these people, man.”

I did know this. I did a fairly wide-ranging interview with Wale about his Redskins fandom last year, but running back Larry Johnson wasn’t on the team then, so I was surprised to hear that was one of Wale’s pals on the team.

“I was actually friends with him before he became a Redskin,” Wale told me. “I’m excited to get him in town, and I’m here to keep him out of trouble.”
Johnson explained: “We met in Miami and you know, knowing he was such a Redskins fan and he repped D.C. so hard, I told him there was a chance I might come over here. And when it ended up happening, we exchanged information and from there it just took off.”

Wale just released a new mixtape, More About Nothing. It’s receiving good notes from old-school outlets like the Wall Street Journal, but who needs music reviewers when you have former Pro Bowl running backs around. Here’s Johnson’s review of the project:

“It’s dope,” Johnson said. “I think it’s a little bit more … I would say it’s like a good part two to the album, like a soft preview of what’s to come. Like right now he’s stacking on top of his previous success and putting the hits together. You know, one was one or two hits. The next album was two, three hits. Now, you know, putting the mixtape, he’s adding a different audience to it, which is what he has to do. And I think coming out with his mixtape makes him a little bit more diverse rather than just that one half of a person.”

(My download stalled yesterday, so I haven’t heard it yet and can’t comment.)

But Johnson took some exception to the idea that Wale was keeping him out of trouble in D.C. “More like I’m keeping HIM out trouble,” he said, laughing.

The only way to resolve this logjam was to ask a guy who knew both of the involved parties: cornerback DeAngelo Hall. “That’s a tough one,” Hall said, when I asked who was watching out for whom. “They both need to keep each other out of trouble.”

The Seinfeld-influenced More About Nothing is available for download here.

Larry Johnson, despite his reputation as a less-than-loquacious dude, has rapidly established himself as one of the more interesting guys to talk to about the off-the-field aspects of football. He’s a voracious student of NFL history, a former football card collector, and an avid videogame player, and he’s proved willing to chat about all those things.

Also, he’s got these shoes, custom-made through NikeID, black and gold with Truck on the back of the left foot and Stick on the back of the right foot.

People who have played the Madden Football videogame since the 06 version know what the truck stick is — a flick of the right control stick that causes the running back to lower his shoulder and take on a would-be tackler. But that doesn’t immediately explain why it’s on Larry Johnson’s shoes.
“When I was with Dante Hall” on the Chiefs, Johnson explained, “he was the Human Joystick ’cause he was moving fast. But I ain’t got no spin, I ain’t got no juke, I got nothing but straight truck stick.”

Which I figured was probably good, since “Circle Button” would look a lot less dominating on a pair of Nikes than “Truck Stick”. Then again, I asked Willie Parker what his two-word videogame shoe phrase would be, and he went with “X Button,” which is the burst of speed, and that sounds kind of cool.

Mike Sellers demurred — “I couldn’t actually put it on there, ’cause it’d probably be explicit” — and Clinton Portis recused himself from the discussion entirely.

“Uh-uh, that’s Larry’s thing, man,” Portis said. “He’s downhill, he’s a hard runner, so I think it suits.”

(I should also note that I noticed Johnson’s shoes while he was signing a seemingly endless string of autographs, just as he told me months ago that he’d do. Johnson said that he got to pretty much everyone who wanted one, and added, “These people come out here and take their days off, their vacations off, kids take their time from playing Xbox to come out here and watch us play football and get autographs. So we oughtta give it to ‘em.”)

Larry Johnson, as previously noted (and noted, and noted and so on), grew up a Redskins fan and still maintains rooting ties to old neighborhood. So it’s kind of fortunate for him that he’s moved back in time to for the arrivals of Stephen Strasburg and whomever the Wizards take with the first pick in this year’s NBA Draft.

The only Redskins player I’ve talked to about the NBA Draft was Jeremy Jarmon, a Kentucky guy, and he predictably suggested that they should draft John Wall, the star point guard from Kentucky. But Larry Johnson approaches it from the other side, as a D.C. sports fan, so I asked his opinion as well.

“I think it’s gonna be Wall,” he told me. “I hope so. It would go well with the momentum and the feeling and the mood of trying to pick the organization up to move on to better things. I think that’s the best pick.”

And would you go check out a game?

“Definitely,” Johnson said. “I’m gonna get me some courtside seats, if I can get some. I wanna start going to the basketball games. That’s one thing I didn’t have being in Cincinnati or Kansas City, was any NBA teams. But I like being able to go to basketball games. In KC, I used to go to a Division II or III school for basketball games. I’d sit courtside for that and have fun. I like that. I’m looking forward to supporting the other teams in this area.”

Johnson, to his credit, realizes what an interesting time it is to be a fan of D.C. sports. “I think it’s exciting,” he said. “This year’s exciting for D.C. in general, whether you’re a Redskins or a Wizards fan. The basketball team was just so down for a couple of years, and it makes you feel good when you have young talent coming in like that, like Wall.”

And how do the Redskins fit into that?

“With Donovan and all the guys that we’re bringing in here,” Johnson said, “it feels like an excitement’s in the air for when the season comes back around.”

For even more on Larry Johnson, check out Homer McFanboy’s interview with him.

So when I heard that he had gone to an Orioles/Nats game and seen Josh Willingham hit a 10th inning walk-off home run, I wondered if he was still rooting for the squad of his childhood, or if Johnson — also like many of us — had transferred his affections over to the new guys closer to home.

“Nah,” he said, “I don’t bandwagon like that. I remember when they were the Senators, though, way back in the day.”

I know that Johnson is a student of sports history, but remembering a baseball team that ceased to exist eight years before he was even born seemed … unlikely, to say the least.
“No,” he clarified, “I don’t remember ‘em like that. But I used to collect baseball cards, me and my brother did, so we used to go through all of those things. We thought that was gonna make us money, collecting all the baseball cards.”

How’d that work out for you?

“It did not,” Johnson said, flatly. “My brother actually kept his, but I kept losing mine. I kept spilling stuff on ‘em, or I’d throw ‘em away or forget about ‘em. My brother had boxes and boxes of clean, crisp cards. I feel out of it after awhile, ’cause I was more into football — more into PLAYING sports instead of collecting it.”

How cool was it, then, for you to wind up on a football card for the first time?

“It was crazy,” Johnson told me. “It was just funny, where they get some of these action shots and stuff like that. But I thought it was cool.”

Do you look at the picture and remember where the shot was taken?

“Some of them, yeah,” he said, “I know. I’ll be like, man, that’s that Tampa Bay game where Priest got hurt and that’s when they wanted me to come in there. I remember a lot of the games they have on there.”

Johnson also talked to me about his plans for fitting into the DC sports scene in 2010; check that out here. 2009 Bengals Larry Johnson in the style of 1987 Topps football cards comes via The Writer’s Journey.

One of the things I noticed during this latest mini-camp (and tweeted about, actually) was that Larry Johnson always finishes his runs in the end zone. Most guys, once they’ve gotten through the scripted portion of the play and into the open field (so to speak), will run a little bit before pulling up. Sometimes there’ll be a bit of a run for the goal line — Clinton Portis seems to enjoy doing this while whooping and hollering every so often — but it’s usually not at full practice speed, let alone full game speed.

Johnson, though, puts his head down and really runs.

“Dick Vermeil taught us that,” Johnson told me, “and it kinda stuck with me. James Saxon was my first running backs coach when I got into the league, and that’s what the expectation [was]. Coming behind Priest [Holmes], he finished EVERY run. So I think that kind of fed off to me that that’s what we had to do when we practiced was finish every run.”

I was wrong about one thing, though:

He doesn’t head to the end zone every time, at least not here.

“We used to finish all the way to the end zone no matter where we were on the field,” he explained. “So this was kinda new to me that they only want us to go 40 yards. I think that, there being a lot of guys out here, you don’t get a lot of conditioning [by] doing it every single play. So you’ve gotta make the best of it and try to go hard as you can every single time you’re out there.”

There’s no particular significance to forty yards — “It’s just a good distance,” Johnson said, “everybody runs a 40-yard dash.” I guess the offense was lined up inside the 40 a fair bit, though, because I could swear I kept seeing Johnson in the end zone.

Johnson was also asked about growing up a Redskins fan, and in the course of that discussion he noted how, “My dad used to take me to Redskins camp when I was little.” On the Saturday of this second mini-camp, Johnson was able to return the favor, having his dad in to observe the mini-camp. Megan Imbert of Redskins Broadcast Network was able to catch up with Larry Johnson, Sr., for a couple of questions about watching his son practice with the Redskins.

http://p.castfire.com/GVrsz/video/308445/redskins_2010-05-08-163733.1671.flv

When Larry Johnson signed on Friday, he told me a story about former Redskins great Gary Clark. It was a story about how Johnson grew up a Redskins fan and about why Johnson tries to sign every autograph the fans ask for; I thought it showed a different side of a guy who has some knocks against him, so I posted it.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that it could be perceived as a slight to Clark, though. When Johnson told the story, it was in the context of how much he looked up to those guys and how enthusiastically he rooted for the team. His tone wasn’t critical or negative toward Clark, but reading it cold I can certainly see how it was taken that way by some.

In addition to comments like those linked above, the blog Fatpickled posted an even more detailed memory of an autograph encounter with Clark:

I was visiting Redskins Park in January of 1988, the last day before the Redskins headed off to San Diego to completely destroy the Broncos 42-10. I arrived early that day and was the only person in the lobby when Gary Clark walked right by me at a brisk pace, headed upstairs to where the admin offices were located. I quickly asked Gary if he would sign an autograph for me, he informed me that he was in a hurry and could not sign for me. Even at 13 years old, I remember this being a WTF moment? I’m the only person in this lobby and he’s not going to take 30 seconds to sign for me? He spent more time explaining why he couldn’t sign than it actually would have taken to sign. I was bummed.

Later, though, when Redskins Park had gotten crowded, this is what happened to young Fatpickle:

As I was sitting on the stairs watching all the mayhem, I heard a psst, psst noise coming from the 2nd floor above my head. As I turned and looked up I was amazed to see Gary Clark waving me up the stairs. I collected my things and bounded up the stairs to meet Gary and who else should be sitting up on the 2nd floor…Sam Huff and Sonny Jurgensen, who was enjoying a large cigar. Gary happily signed for me and even promised to catch a TD for me in the Super Bowl (he did.) As an added bonus I was able to also secure the autographs of 2 Hall of Famers.

So there you go: Johnson’s story wasn’t meant to sound negative, and it wasn’t nearly representative of the guy that Gary Clark was all the time. Now that that’s all cleared up, let’s enjoy these fantastic pictures from Clark’s appearance in the 1991 Pro Bowl.

(Click images to see a larger version.)

Clark in action during the game.

Clark alongside RB Earnest Byner, who is wearing Atlanta Falcons zubaz pants.

Clark alongside Jerry Rice, Sterling Sharpe, Andre Rison, and future Redskins playcaller Sherm Lewis. (Yes, yes, insert bingo joke here if you must.)

Clark with Barry Sanders. Clark was a Smurfy wide receiver, so the height comparison here really points out just how amazing Sanders was.