Bobby Johnson has a permanent place in Big Blue lore for his fourth-and-17 catch of a Phil Simms pass in Minnesota that helped the Giants win the NFC East in 1986, setting them up with home field for their run to the Super Bowl XXI title.
At the time of that catch, the third-year receiver was in the throes of an addiction to crack cocaine, which would soon end his career, according to the new book “Big Blue Wrecking Crew: Smashmouth Football, a Little Bit of Crazy, and the ’86 Super Bowl Champion New York Giants” by Jerry Barca (St. Martin’s Press).
In an interview with the author, Johnson — straight-laced son of an Air Force man from East St. Louis, Ill. — spelled out the details of his first exposure to crack. It was before the 1986 season, when he and an unidentified teammate invited two women to Johnson’s apartment in Hackensack.
Barca writes that one of the women brought out some cocaine, combined it with water and baking soda and boiled the mixture in a spoon. Rocks emerged … she’d made crack cocaine. The woman told Johnson, “You have to try this.” He took a hit.
“It was just overwhelmingly good,” he told Barca.
Johnson thought he was mentally strong enough to do this a couple times, “But it don’t work like that,” he said.
That night, the book reveals, Johnson and one woman went to his bedroom to have sex, then he stayed up until dawn using the drug.
Johnson would continue to chase the feeling from that very first high.
“If you have $500, you’ll spend $500,” he said. “If you have $5,000, you’ll spend $5,000 just chasing that.”
The book also details the circumstances that made Johnson late for the NFC Championship Game at home against the Redskins. He’d stayed the night before in a hotel but woke up early in the morning, went to his apartment to do drugs and wound up falling asleep.
“Next thing you know it was a couple hours before the game,” Johnson detailed. “I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.’ I jumped into the car and just tried to get there as fast as I could.” But he got stuck in game-day traffic. When arrived in the locker room, he was met by a tongue-lashing from Jim Burt and Lawrence Taylor.
In the final moments of the Super Bowl, Johnson cried as he sat on the bench and told teammate Tony Galbreath, “I’m gone, man.” The next summer, he was traded to the Chargers, and he never played another down in the NFL.