Texans’ Johnson hard to ignore

FOXBORO — Andre Johnson is 6-foot-3 and 228 pounds and was a Big East champion in the 60- and 100-meter dashes at the University of Miami.

In other words, he’s big. And fast.

And he’s been a nightmare matchup for every defense that has faced him in recent years.

The 28-year-old former No. 3 pick hasn’t always gotten the attention he likely deserves because he plays for a Texans team that always seems to be on the cusp of the playoffs but hasn’t gotten there yet.

But given his numbers and the way he’s thoroughly dominated games, he’s been impossible to ignore.

“He’s pretty good at everything,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said this week. “He’s a big target, tough after the catch. He’s like Terrell Owens, where he catches short balls and breaks tackles and runs a long way. People get up there and try to play him tighter and he runs past them. He’s good on intermediate routes, he’s good on deep routes, and he’s good on short routes, and running with the ball after the catch. He certainly attracts a lot of attention, as he should.”

Last Sunday against Miami, Johnson had five receptions for 71 yards, and went over the 1,500-yard mark for the season. Coupled with the 1,575 yards he had last season, Johnson is now just the second player in league history to post back-to-back 1,500-yard seasons, after former Colts star Marvin Harrison.

It is the fourth time in his seven-year career he’s been over 1,000 yards, and he barely missed as a rookie in 2003, when he recorded 976.

In the two weeks before Houston’s game with Miami, Johnson torched the Seahawks and Rams for a combined 389 yards on 20 catches.

“He gets paid the ultimate compliment every week with what people try to do defensively (against him). He’s been something else,” Texans head coach Gary Kubiak said. “He’s kind of been the rock ever since I’ve been here. I’ve known him for years and he’s as good a player as I’ve ever been around. He’s been exceptional.”

Johnson moves all over the field for Houston, lining up wide or in the slot, running go routes and crossing patterns. His ability to do that is part of the reason it’s so tough to cover him.

Patriots cornerback Leigh Bodden and his teammates will have their hands full trying to contain him.

“He does it all. He does all the routes. You never know where he’s going to run, where he’s going to be,” Bodden said.

Bodden has faced Johnson twice before — once last year, when he was with the Lions, and in 2007, when Bodden was with the Browns.

The Lions used both man and zone coverages against Johnson, and — much like nearly everything else Detroit tried last year — it didn’t work too well. He had one of his best games of the season, with 11 catches for 141 yards.
Kubiak says it is Johnson’s intelligence as a football player that allows the Texans to move him all over the field and still get results.

“I’ve said this many times: he’s a smart player. I mean, we move him all over the place and you’ve got to try to make it tough on defenses by what you do with him. He deserves a great deal of credit for his football mind and the way he handles game plans. It gives us the flexibility to move him all over the place. That’s a credit to him; he’s a very sharp player.”

Because defenses tailor their coverages for Johnson, Kubiak said the Texans must do a lot of adjusting on the fly to alignments the other teams hadn’t seen on film. Not surprisingly, Johnson receives a great deal of double coverage, and quarterback Matt Schaub has clearly done a good job of finding the open man because he leads the league with 4,467 passing yards.

Going by the numbers, the Jets and cornerback Darelle Revis did the best job on Johnson this year, in the season-opener, when Revis held him to four catches for 35 yards.

Click here to order Andre Johnson’s proCane Rookie Card.



(projo.com)