It's Good To Be Chad

But Johnson, Houshmandzadeh says, stops short of putting himself before the team. "If he does stuff that we disagree with," says Houshmandzadeh, "we're gonna take it up with him ourselves, or Coach will. We keep it on the team. Chad loves football too much to let anything get in the way."

On a recent Tuesday afternoon at his three-story town house near Cincinnati's Eden Park, Johnson sits on a red suede sofa and rolls through a morning's worth of interviews--local radio stations, ESPN radio, NFL radio. Every host asks Johnson if something's wrong with Palmer, hoping, Johnson says, to bait him into a slap at his quarterback. "You know what would happen if I show frustration?" says Johnson. "Man, the media, everybody will kill me. I would be like fresh meat. T.O. all over again. They really want to see me and Carson go at it. I can't feed into that."

His friend Steve Smith has also been calling in advance of the upcoming Panthers game, telling Chad he has "personally blessed" the Panthers cornerbacks. "You're not gonna see single coverage," Smith tells him. "It's gonna be Cover 2 all day."

There has also been the regular trash-talk call with Falcons cornerback DeAngelo Hall, a call that always starts out with Johnson asking, "You get out healthy on Sunday?" and Hall responding, "Yeah, you?" Then they go at it, boasting about how they are going to humiliate each other this Sunday. "You can't cover me," Johnson repeats. "It's ridiculous."

Surrounding Johnson in his living room are huge acrylic paintings--heroically scaled images of number 85 in various gridiron-combat poses. Atop the TV and tucked into the corners of framed photos of Johnson are two-inch-by-two-inch school pictures of his children. Johnson's greatest regret, he acknowledges, is that he is not as good a parent as he would like to be. "I don't think I'm the father I need to be right now," he said a few days earlier. "It doesn't really bother me that much because once I'm done, I'll have all the time in the world with them. I've lost a little time. I know I'm missing something valuable--valuable moments in their life."

Johnson points out that this is a common dilemma for NFL players who spend so much time away from their families. "But we never talk about that," Johnson says. "That's more like what women would talk about.

"My kids come up for certain games, before it becomes too cold," he says. "Not that often. I get a weekend here with them, a weekend there. Not that much. I know I'm missing something. But we'll all be fine."

Another call comes in. This time it's Jim Rome phoning from his radio show. He also asks if Palmer is still hesitant because of the injuries. " Chad," he says at one point, "you can't be happy with your role in the offense."

Johnson does not take the bait. He knows better.