Andre Johnson: Super Bowl, not just playoffs, is Texans' goal

Houston -- Andre Johnson is one of the top receivers in the NFL, piling up yards and accolades by the armful in his six-year career.

The individual honors are nice, but Johnson knows he won't go down in history as one of the game's best unless he can help the Texans to more than just their first playoff appearance.

"I play this game of football for only one reason and that's to win," Johnson said Monday. "I don't play it for anything else. When you go over guys' careers, of all the former guys that have played, the first question they ask is how many Super Bowls have they won."

"So that's my goal. To win as many Super Bowls as I can before my time is up."

Of course to win a Super Bowl the Texans will have to make the playoffs after seven seasons without a winning record, much less a trip to the postseason. Houston hit bottom with a 2-14 record in 2005 before improving to 6-10 a year later and going 8-8 the last two seasons.

This is not a new goal for Johnson, who was the third pick in 2003, but in years past his stated goal has simply been making the playoffs.

As he approaches his 28th birthday, Johnson is thinking bigger.

"Playoffs (are) just a start, it's about winning rings," he said. "That's what it's all about."

As he sweats through the third week of Houston's organized practices, he's often smiling. He likes the look of the team so far and is excited about the season despite the opener being more than three months away.

Coach Gary Kubiak loves Johnson's attitude and thinks his confidence and work ethic will help his young team.
"He's a leader by example," Kubiak said. "He's not a rah rah guy. He just does the job and works hard."

Johnson's performance last season was key in Houston ranking third in total offense with more than 382 yards a game. He finished with a career-high and NFL-best 1,575 yards receiving and made his second Pro Bowl a year after a tough season where he missed seven games with injuries.

Johnson said his success last season was helped by the work of rookie running back Steve Slaton. Slaton led all rookies with 1,284 yards rushing and brought consistency to a backfield that had lacked it for years due to injury.

"When you have a consistent running game it opens up everything else," Johnson said. "You don't have to become one dimensional and it works well for the play action. You have to run the ball to be successful so as long as we keep running the ball, we're going to be successful."

Kubiak wants to see how his offense will run in the third year with Johnson and quarterback Matt Schaub together and how Slaton will respond with a year of experience.

"The key in this league is keeping guys together and playing together, that's how they get better," Kubiak said. "With the experience should come better execution."

Johnson and Schaub often talk about their goal of making the playoffs, but Johnson said that talk is getting redundant.

"We talk about it, but it doesn't really matter if you don't put it out on the field," Johnson said. "We know what we have to do. It's not a secret. It's crazy to just keep talking about it all the time when it's not happening. It's on both of our minds and we know where we want to be."

Johnson believes the first step in reaching that goal is to get off to a better start than they did last season. The Texans started 0-4 after their schedule was rearranged by Hurricane Ike and they had to take a bye in Week 2 and play their first three games on the road.

"When you look at that I think that was the biggest thing," Johnson said. "We started off in the hole. We can't do what we did last year, 0-4 that's not a great thing."

(detnews.com)