Kansas City Chiefs suspend Larry Johnson, so what's next?

The Kansas City Chiefs continued practicing like normal over their bye week with one major exception: tweeting running back Larry Johnson was nowhere to be seen.

On Wednesday evening, the Chiefs officially suspended Johnson from the team until November 9. They made the announcement on their web site, www.kcchiefs.com

The exact announcement from the team read: “The Kansas City Chiefs have suspended RB Larry Johnson for Conduct Detrimental to the Club effective immediately. Johnson will not be permitted to participate in any team activities or be on team premises until Monday, November 9th. The Chiefs will have no further comment on Johnson’s status at this time.”

In the short term, the running back duties will be handled by Jamaal Charles, Dantrell Savage and the recently returned Kolby Smith. Smith had spent the first part of the season on the NFL’s Physically-Unable-to-Perform (PUP) list recovering from a 2008 knee injury.

The question is what’s going to happen to the team – and Johnson – in the long term? My guess is that Johnson has probably made his last carry in the NFL as a Kansas City Chief. He is only 75 yards away from becoming the team’s all-time leading rusher, an honor that the vast majority of Chiefs fans don’t think that he deserves.

Personally, I don’t care so much about that. I will look back fondly at the two and one-half seasons where Johnson was the league’s best running back, but won’t remember him the way I do Ed Podolak,  Joe Delaney, Christian Okoye, Marcus Allen or Priest Holmes.

Johnson hasn’t just burned bridges in his time with the Chiefs – he’s napalmed them. The new regime seemingly gave him a clean slate and a starting job when most people thought that he wouldn’t even be on the roster this year. On the surface, Johnson seemed to buy in and was actually singled out by coach Todd Haley as a player that did everything that was asked of him.

Even fans who had grown tired of his off-field issues and on-field sulking were willing to give him a second chance. Or third. Or fourth. Or ... well, you get the picture.

That lasted until Sunday night when news of Johnson’s tweets, insults of his Twitter followers (and supposed Chiefs fans), and anti-gay slurs came out. When he followed that up with another anti-gay slur directed at members of the media on Monday, the gloves came off. 95% of Chiefs fans in town are angry and never want to see Johnson wearing Chiefs Red again.

Haley and GM Scott Pioli have insisted that their mission is to get “the right 53” players on the team and not necessarily the 53 most talented. In other words, they want 53 guys that buy into what they’re trying to do, practice and play the way they want, and hopefully ... eventually ... win championships.

It’s time to put their money where their mouths are. There is no way that Johnson fits into that “right 53” definition in any way, shape or form. I believe the Chiefs would love for the NFL to step in and administer a suspension. If a player appeals a suspension from the league, the process goes through the Commissioner’s office itself and is almost universally upheld. However, if the club suspends a player, the appeal is usually heard by an independent arbitrator, and who knows what can happen there.

This could be the litmus test that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell needs to set down rules on the problems that social networks are causing teams across the NFL. Until Johnson, most of the problems have been superficial – complaints about the training camp food or a particularly hard practice. Johnson openly questioned his coach’s qualifications on Twitter and then attacked some of the people who responded to his tweets using homophobic slurs.

This is right up Goodell’s alley if he wants to make a statement to players and coaches about what the NFL considers appropriate behavior.

If Johnson is back in uniform after November 9 with the Chiefs, Todd Haley and Scott Pioli can officially kiss their “honeymoon” period in Kansas City goodbye forever.

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