YONG KIM / Staff photographer
Jim Johnson chats it up with the media during training camp last summer.
Sam Donnellon: Eagles' Jim Johnson: Much more than a coach
KEEP YOUR distance. That's what you're taught to do in this job. Cover the teams, the players, the coaches. Listen to their answers, their reasons, their spin. Then offer yours.
A business proposition. It works, too, mostly, until you get the kind of news that came down yesterday, that Jim Johnson, who will be 68 on May 26, has left the Eagles again to deal with the melanoma that first haunted him in 2001, and last winter was discovered in other parts of his body, including his spine.
The prognosis isn't very good when it gets in there. You can look it up.
"Jim and I agreed that he needs to concentrate all of his efforts on his recovery," said coach Andy Reid. "His health is No. 1."
You hear the news yesterday, and that professional distance dissipates. You think of Jim Johnson as a guy, not a coach, a friend even. You think of all the things you know about him that have nothing to do with that wild-and-woolly defense of his, the stuff he has shared over the years. His wife, his family, his stops before here. He was a college football star once. He was a pro in Buffalo.
The news makes you sad, ticked, and prayerful, all in the span of a few seconds. You want to help, to fight, to "Hit something!" as Johnson might say in midseason form.
Most of us have three lists of people. People you know and love, people you know and don't love, people you know and don't think much about either way. The older we get, the more those lists shift, the denser that last list seems to get.
The older we get, the more that first list surprises you.
Jim Johnson is on that first list. Not because he's warm and fuzzy, not because he tells jokes or sneaks me scoops from the Eagles' compound. (He doesn't, not a one.) He's on that list because he always seems so comfortable with himself, and as a result, makes you feel so comfortable around him.
I've never had a beer with the guy.
It just feels like I have.
No question seems to unnerve or irk him. As smart as he is, as lauded as his schemes have been by players and peers, no answer he has ever given when I was around sounded condescending - even by accident.
In a profession filled with protectionism and paranoia, Johnson answers your questions honestly, elaborates when he is asked to. As accomplished as he is, there is not a trace of arrogance in his answers, not a knee-jerk in his ailing bones.
Most coaches don't really want you to learn anything. Johnson doesn't mind teaching you, if you listen and let him.
He's a guy I've sat and listened to on a Thursday when I was writing the punter for the next day. Not for the information, necessarily. Just to hear him talk.
You know those people in your life who seem to send you off with a shot of adrenaline?
And they don't even mean to do it?
Johnson is that way.
Just the sight of him on that motorized scooter during minicamp earlier this month made me reassess my whines and whimpers.
"I'm taking this one day at a time or one camp at a time," he said then, when asked about coaching this fall. "I'll just keep working at it, and as long as I can hold my work schedule, I'll feel fine, and we'll just see how it goes."
Too often we talk about cancer in terms of competition, as if you can champion an opponent that makes and changes the rules indiscriminately, and inhumanely. You don't beat cancer. You just outlast it, survive it, force it to play all four quarters and maybe some overtime, too.
"He's struggling, but he's a tough guy and a true battler," Reid said. "I hope everyone will keep him in their thoughts and prayers during this period of time."
Get better, old man.
Our world needs you on that first list.
Lord knows, you've beaten the odds before. *
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