SAN DIEGO – He walked onto the field for the first time in gray sweatpants, gray sweatshirt and a gray T-shirt, flipping a football to himself, taking a good look around Qualcomm Stadium. Getting a sense for just what it feels like at the top of the world.
This, Keyshawn Johnson had insisted all week, is all that he’d ever wanted out of this game, this sport, this life. This was the moment he’d dreamed about since he was a little kid, growing up across the street from the L.A. Coliseum.
“I want to be the guy that’s all about championships,” he’d said on Tuesday.
“I want to be the kind of player that when people think about me long after I’m retired, they’ll say, ‘That’s the guy with all the rings,” he’d said on Wednesday.
“I am officially through with the media,” he’d written Thursday, in an online diary in which he declared his intentions to pull “a Sterling Sharpe, a Steve Carlton, a Duane Thomas. I’m done.”
Well, come on now, did you really expect Super Bowl week to come and go without Keyshawn doing something out of the ordinary? Even on Tuesday, media day, when he’d filled a couple of New York notebooks with his wit and wisdom, lining up and knocking down, in order, Rich Kotite, Wayne Chrebet, Al Groh, and even Bill Parcells, he wasn’t doing anything more than just playing the part.
Key being Key.
Ah, but this? A media boycott? Now that’s something we’d like to see. Key keeping his thoughts to himself? Anyone care to set the over-under on how long that’ll last? A month? A week?
Tomorrow?
“I’m deciding right here and now that I’m not talking to reporters – even the ones I like – for the rest of my career,” he wrote in his journal late in the week. “You can write the headline now: ‘Keyshawn Not Talking To the Media for the Next Three Years.’ Because win or lose on Sunday, I’m playing three more years in this league. And I’m announcing it right here that I am officially through with the media. It only took a Super Bowl to make me realize that there is no way to win the battle with the media, so I’m calling it quits.”
Yes, in its own way, this was sheer Keyshawn genius at work, because if you’ve followed any portion of Key’s career – from the moment he was picked in the draft, from the time he pulled that holdout his rookie year, from the moment he pulled off that one-man-show in the playoff win over Jacksonville, and from the moment he beat it out of town – following Key’s career has been something of a cottage industry in our part of the NFL.
He has always been mouthy, always been chatty, always had too many opinions for some and too few touchdown catches for others. It’s pretty clear that the only reason why he isn’t still a Jet is that Al Groh was spooked by him, and even more clear that for as much as the Jets may have been helped by the trade to Tampa Bay, there have been an awful lot of moments when Vinny Testaverde and Chad Pennington could have used a 6-foot, 4-inch target barreling over the middle.
And all that means is this:
He was born for this stage, he was born for this moment, he was born for this game, The Big Game, the Super Bowl that he’s dreamed about for as long as he’s worn shoulder pads.
It’s why it was no surprise that he was the only player on the field at 12:38 p.m., Pacific Time, nearly three full hours prior to kickoff. So many times growing up, he would sneak across the street, sneak into the Coliseum, look around the vast expanse of the field, plume the vast expanse of his imagination, envisioning great things for himself happening on that field. Years later, at USC, that’s exactly what happened.
All these years later, here he was again, all by himself. He didn’t need to sneak in through a familiar gate, didn’t need to keep an eye out for security guards who would chase him away. The guards on the field were there looking out for him. One even offered to throw him a few balls. Johnson demurred. Just kept tossing the ball to himself.
No doubt envisioning great things happening for him on this field.