Johnson needs more structure to avoid trouble
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By David Haugh
Columnist
The Chicago Tribune
December 17, 2006
chicagotribune.com
His habits are hard to break
"We've done our research on him." —Bears coach Lovie Smith on April 24, 2004, after drafting defensive tackle Tank Johnson from the University of Washington.
No doubt the Bears knew what they were getting in Tank Johnson.
They investigated the rumors of insubordination and moodiness at Washington. They talked at length to the pro scouts who helped draw the personality sketch in Pro Football Weekly's draft preview that depicted Johnson as being "not respectful to staff or teammates."
They heard all about a troubled childhood that included six homes before the 6th grade and an incident in Gary, where gang-bangers tried to set him on fire. They knew Johnson's mother left the family when he was a child and his father spent time in prison, and that his adolescence lacked structure and direction.
The Bears took him anyway and vowed to provide what he needed.
Have they done so adequately?
Johnson's third arrest in his three-year Bears tenure and the shooting death of an associate who lived at Johnson's Gurnee home suggest they have not.
Johnson is a 25-year-old professional who earns a six-figure salary. He is a father of two young children. He deserves to live his own life, answer to nobody but his family about his personal choices and fulfill the American dream. He is a grown man, after all.
That was the gist of coach Lovie Smith's explanation Thursday, the day Gurnee police raided Johnson's home. There they found loaded weapons within reach of his young children and a friend of his, William B. Posey, in possession of marijuana.
"I don't know who he's hanging out with off the field," Smith said.
Therein could lie the Bears' first problem with Johnson.
The team employs nutritionists, masseuses, security guards and all sorts of other personnel intended to meet their players' every need. They could use more baby-sitters.
They need to consider restricting the independence of players who lose the benefit of the doubt the way Johnson did after he was arrested twice before Thursday's incident. Johnson evidently is not as equipped to handle adulthood as many of his teammates. It's one thing to tell him to just grow up. It's another to show him how.
The shooting death early Saturday morning of Posey, who described himself as Johnson's bodyguard, sadly reinforced how concerned the Bears need to be about the company Johnson keeps.
Poor choices
Johnson makes foolish decisions. But the Bears bear some responsibility to help him make smarter ones or else stop complaining when he fouls up.
Find a loophole in the NFL Players Association agreement and arrange regular home visits. Ask tough questions. Protect your multimillion-dollar investment. Impose guidelines on people like Johnson whose history reveals a tendency to go beyond them.
Gurnee police said officers had between 10 and 20 contacts with the Johnson household because of complaints ranging from guns being fired to Posey smoking marijuana on the back porch.
How did the number of police visits get so high without someone at Halas Hall suggesting he should put the guns away, at the very least, and lose the shady buddy?
"We believe in Tank," Bears general manager Jerry Angelo said. "He's not a bad person. He has made bad decisions. We've seen that. But he's not a bad person, so I'm not going to sit here and indict him on anything other than he has made some poor choices and has done some stupid things. He himself would tell you that."
Indeed, Johnson acknowledged Friday letting down himself, his teammates and the organization, and he most certainly did. Almost every Bears fan would agree.
But to what degree did the team let Johnson down by not demanding that a player prone to a reckless lifestyle shape up—or else?
Like every NFL team, the Bears rely heavily on a player development program that equips team members with life skills and educates them on matters outside the game.
Is that enough with a player like Johnson, who in the last 18 months has behaved in a manner that defined his early years? Is that enough for a team making news for the wrong reasons the second season in a row?
A lifeline
Brenda Hanserd met Tank Johnson in Tempe, Ariz., when he was a 13-year-old full of more charisma than answers. Hanserd taught Sunday school at Canaan Baptist Church and reached out to Johnson, a teenager whose father, Terry Sr., had moved the family away from the violence of Gary to Minnetonka, Minn., and finally to Arizona. Johnson's dad already had served a prison sentence in Texas, and Tank Johnson says his mom, Natalie Mobley, left the family sometime around his eighth birthday. Johnson has talked in previous interviews about his parents' drug use in the '80s that led to a chaotic upbringing.
In Hanserd, he found hope in the desert and an escape route to prosperity. Her influence and the impact of participation in ROTC and sports like football and volleyball at McClintock High School helped transform an at-risk student into a can't-miss student-athlete.
"I always told T.J., 'It's not where you've been, it's where you go,'" Hanserd, a vice president of a health-care company, said Friday on the phone from Arizona. "I'm his adopted mother."
Hanserd, now 46, was listed as Johnson's legal guardian until he turned 18, and Johnson has called her the "angel on my shoulder." She spent a week at Johnson's home last spring after he underwent surgery on a torn quadriceps and keeps in frequent contact with him, his girlfriend Lari and the couple's two children.
When they spoke Friday about the six misdemeanor gun charges complicating his future and keeping him out of Sunday's game against Tampa Bay, she heard the disappointment in Johnson's voice.
"I stand beside him, and I love my son," Hanserd said. "He's growing and maturing, and he makes mistakes. He's learning. Unfortunately, he's learning in a public arena how to handle himself."
The presence of so many loaded guns in the house concerned Hanserd, who says she never saw any weapons in the home during her visits. But police finding six caged pit bulls in the back yard came as no surprise to her or to other people who know Johnson.
According to Hanserd and other family members, Johnson has had at least one pit bull since college and has long dreamed of starting a pit-bull farm.
"He doesn't fight them, he doesn't breed them," Hanserd said. "He has had them for three years. I tried to tell him to get just one, but he does love animals."
Television pictures of a disheveled, shirtless Johnson carrying his young children to a waiting car in his driveway disturb Hanserd almost as much as the idea of 20 officers using a battering ram to storm a home she considers stable. She will be the first person to admit her bias.
"I don't see the person other people may see," Hanserd said.
Gary influences
Harvey and Alice Johnson, still living in the Gary home where they raised Johnson's dad, have seen more than they can bear watching news reports that showed their grandson's house after the police raid.
"I know they tore it up pretty good inside," said Harvey Johnson, 85. "I hate to see this happening to him. He's not about that at all."
He says his wife plans to call Johnson so he knows his family in Gary supports him.
"We're all concerned with his well-being," said Alice Johnson, 83. "What can I say about the guns? I'm disappointed."
Johnson hasn't lived in Gary since he was 10 and claims the city with varying degrees of pride and reluctance. At Washington, there was no mention of the city in his biography in the school's media guide, yet on his right leg is a tattoo shaped like the state of Indiana with a giant "GI" for Gary, Ind.
He has shared the goal of holding annual summer football camps and spoken about the need to "represent" the place that formed street-tough instincts he never outgrew.
Yet another Johnson relative who wished not to be identified laughed over the phone upon being asked about Johnson's support system in Gary.
"He's close enough to visit, but we never see him, so what can I say?" the family member said. "We're related. But a lot of times, money changes people. I guess that's what happened with him."
Professional football and the $1.725 million signing bonus Johnson received two years ago opened up a world he never imagined possible. It included newfound wealth, friends and responsibilities.
In getting arrested three times since, Johnson has done a poor job of living up to those responsibilities. Maybe he can straighten himself out once again as he did as a troubled teenager in Arizona. Maybe it's time the Bears gave him no other choice.
"This team is everything to me and will continue to be everything to me," Johnson said Friday. "I just want to thank the Bears and my teammates for all their support."
The Bears can say you're welcome by implementing more rigid support around a player who they should know needs it more than most.
dhaugh@tribune.com
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