Miami (and the NFL) brace for the return of... : HURRICANE JIMMY : With Johnson at Helm, Dolphins Had Best Not Ignore Storm Warnings

Leaning back in his office chair, Jimmy Johnson locks his hands behind perfect hair, flashes perfect teeth, puffs out perfectly ruddy cheeks.

This is not a man, this is a wax museum.

The teeth are famous from when he gritted them during Super Bowls on the Dallas Cowboy sideline.

The hair, from when Emmitt Smith messed it up after one of those games.

The cheeks, from when they bulged as he uttered the most renowned locker room exultation that didn’t involve a sick Notre Dame player: “How ‘bout them Cowboys?”

Jimmy Johnson leans, and leans, and then it happens, as it so often does when staring too long at majesty.

There is a flash of misgiving.

Is this the NFL’s best coach . . . or best con man?

Is this somebody who can return from a two-year vacation and replace legendary Don Shula . . . or will he just be more quotable?

Was his coaching the reason the Dallas Cowboys won consecutive Super Bowls in 1993 and ’94 . . . or did Barry Switzer prove last January that it really doesn’t matter?

Does Johnson represent the triumph of old-time swagger in a high-stepping era . . . or is the infatuated football world simply too blind to believe anything else?

Johnson says nothing for about four seconds--this is so rare that the exact time is recorded--when figures appear in the picture window behind him.

Two of his Miami Dolphin players are running across a practice field. Make that, sprinting.

They stop, yell at each other, and start again. Again and again, they sprint across the lush green field under a sun that has already heated the place to unbearable.

The date is May 6, two months before the start of training camp.

The time is 9 a.m.

The players’ schedule for every day this week reads OFF.

“Why, looky there,” Jimmy Johnson says.

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Johnson barks, and blusters, and barrels through the NFL like a man with something to sell or hide.

But the proof is always in that big window behind him.

It happened with the University of Miami, where his Hurricanes won a national championship; with the Dallas Cowboys, who won two national championships, and at FOX TV, where he was probably the most popular figure on the four networks that televised pregame shows.

Now something equally dramatic is happening with that NFL cornerstone in Miami--those underachieving, overpaid, pampered, malingering, Shula-shadowed Dolphins.

Seven months after their new boss moved in, they are the depleted, dehydrated, demeaned, Johnson-waxed Dolphins.

And they are delightful.

They may not all be good football players--they may not win more than a few games--but judging from practices and exhibitions, they will all be playing football.

As opposed to some of that other silliness that occurred under Shula.

The quarterback is the same. A couple of offensive and defensive linemen are the same. The rest of the positions are manned by either new players, or changed ones.

There are rookies in the offensive backfield. Journeymen at wide receiver. Former flops in the secondary.

And all have been frightened.

“Walk through the locker room and look at their eyes,” said former tight end Ronnie Williams, one of many whose certain roster spots were yanked from under them because they showed up out of shape.

Those eyes have seen mass firings, stunning pay cuts, bloody daily drills, and a coach who works so hard he pulled a muscle running sprints in mini-camp.

“You have guys coming up to me totally surprised,” Williams said before he left. “They are taking deep breaths, like I did.”

Those eyes have not seen Don Shula. Not once.

The legendary 26-year Dolphin coach was dissed into submission last spring, at the Dolphin awards banquet, when Johnson gave this speech:

“I’m supposed to say congratulations to all the people in the past, to all the great tradition, to all the people who laid the groundwork. But I only care about one thing: the present. The people who are here to win now.”

And with that, he waved.

As in, goodbye to Shula’s regime, which included players who walked out of meetings. Players who walked onto the practice field late. Players who would not stay with the team at a local hotel on the night before home games.

Even when the place was Don Shula’s Hotel and Golf Club.

Johnson was also saying goodbye to a regime that had not produced a Super Bowl championship in 22 years, or a Super Bowl appearance in 11.

Shula’s Dolphin days unofficially ended on a miserable late December Sunday in Buffalo, when the Bills scored the first 27 points in a playoff game against one of football’s most star-studded rosters.

“I’ve watched that game quite a few times, trying to figure out how we could have been so bad,” said Dolphin defensive end Jeff Cross. “It’s like, you’re playing a game and you don’t know what the hell is going on.”

A couple of weeks later, Johnson was in charge.

“I’m trying hard not to have any negative innuendoes toward Shula, because I really don’t dislike him,” Johnson said. “But there were a lot of things that went wrong last year, things that we need to correct.”

He has made those corrections during practices that lasted as many as five hours a day during the early part of camp.

He has made those corrections during practices that are always in full pads, unlike other NFL teams that spend about half the time in sweats.

“Players call those, ‘Walk-throughs’ . . . but have you ever seen the other team walk through a game?” Johnson said.

He has made each of those corrections in blood-red ink:

--He let top defenders Bryan Cox, Troy Vincent and Marco Coleman walk away to free agency. The same for receiver Irving Fryar.

Vincent guessed he was gone when Johnson screamed at him during the coach’s first meeting, which started early, with Vincent absent.

“I always start my meetings early,” Johnson said. “That way, nobody will ever know if they are late.”

--He cut the team’s top tight end, Eric Green, who, Johnson said, was fat and lazy.

“We had a guy miss 39 practices last year--that’s the equivalent of 13 weeks!” Johnson said of Green. “That ain’t happening this year.”

--He signed Johnny Mitchell, a former New York Jet star, to replace Green.

“Life is beautiful,” Mitchell said when he reported. “This is a great day and a new era.”

Four days later, Mitchell felt so overworked that he retired.

--He cut fullback and team leader Keith Byars for refusing to take a $1-million pay cut.

When Byars begged for his job back, Johnson re-signed him for $300,000 and has since moved him to tight end.

--He signed linebacker Jack Del Rio, of whom he said, “He is everything I want in a football player.”

He also predicted that Del Rio would be the next player to move into a head coaching office.

After one exhibition game, Del Rio was cut.

“If they don’t like you around, they let you know,” said guard Keith Sims.

--Terry Kirby, veteran running back and Shula favorite, began camp as the starter.

After struggling in one scrimmage, he was dropped to second team.

After struggling in the first exhibition game, he was dropped to the third team.

He has since been shipped to the San Francisco 49ers for a fourth-round draft pick.

And the Dolphins’ starting backfield could be guys named Irving Spikes and Stanley Pritchett.

--Karim Abdul Jabbar, former UCLA star running back, began camp with a chance to be a starter. But Johnson has since called him everything but a crybaby for nursing a sore ankle.

“He’s going to have to fight through it,” Johnson said. “This is not UCLA, this is the Miami Dolphins.”

--Shawn Wooden, a flashy rookie cornerback from Notre Dame, lost his starting job after being carried from the field in a neck brace.

“I’ve always heard the phrase, ‘You can’t lose your job to injury,’ ” Johnson said. “I don’t believe that.”

--Each day, Johnson invites reporters onto the field to witness a bruising exercise called, “the middle drill,” in which a reduced offense tries to run the ball up the middle against a reduced defense.

When he thinks the hitting is not hard enough, this former defensive linemen jumps into the middle of the line and starts hitting people himself.

“I’ll say this, we will play some exciting football this year,” Johnson said.

Even if they won’t play as much winning football as he predicted during the NFL owners’ meetings in the spring. He had looked around at a roomful of coaches and said, “We will win this year . . . and there are 28 other people in this room who know it.”

A couple of weeks ago he admitted, “I’ve got concerns about our football team. We need more football players who are bound and determined to do whatever it takes to win.”

Like Shula, Johnson claims they will emphasize the run. But he is realizing that is easier said than done on a team with pass-blocking linemen and Dan Marino, one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history.

Also like Shula, Johnson says he will emphasize defense. But he is realizing that expansion has depleted defenses everywhere, and he will probably start at least two rookies and two questionable cornerbacks in Calvin Jackson and Terrell Buckley.

But the players remaining believe. Just as those players remaining in Dallas after Johnson’s first training camp there in 1989 believed. They won only once in 16 games that year. But four years later, they won the Super Bowl.

“We’ve always had a talented team here, but we’ve never had that edge, never had that killer instinct,” said Jeff Cross, who will miss the start of the season while recuperating from back surgery. “That’s what Jimmy brings. He says, ‘We will win, and we believe him, because he’s been there.”

And no matter what, Johnson says, he will be there again on Oct. 27, when the Dolphins play host to his old Dallas Cowboy team in the NFL’s most celebrated regular-season game. Old owner Jerry Jones. Old nemesis Barry Switzer.

He admitted earlier this summer that despite walking away two years ago, he has often looked back.

“A part of me has said, ‘I don’t want them to win,’ ” he said.

Now that part of him can prove it.

The Dolphins should be decisive underdogs.

And the Cowboys should be worried.

“Games like this, that’s why I’m back in it,” he said, leaning back again, smiling again.

And for now, anyway, the misgivings will have to wait.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Clear the Deck

A look at some of the changes made by new Miami Dolphin Coach Jimmy Johnson. The Dolphins’ projected 1996 starting lineup has 10 new starters from the team’s final lineup under former coach Don Shula in 1995. (r) denotes rookie.

OFFENSE

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1995 Pos 1996 Dan Marino QB Dan Marino Bernie Parmalee RB Irving Spikes Keith Byars FB Stanley Pritchett (r) Irving Fryar WR Randal Hill O.J. McDuffie WR O.J. McDuffie Eric Green TE Kerry Cash Richmond Webb LT Richmond Webb Keith Sims LG Keith Sims Tim Ruddy C Tim Ruddy Andrew Greene RG Chris Gray Billy Milner RT Billy Milner

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DEFENSE

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1995 Pos 1996 Jeff Cross LE Trace Armstrong Tim Bowens LT Daryl Gardener (r) Chuck Klingbeil RT Tim Bowens Marco Coleman RE Daniel Stubbs Dwight Hollier LLB Dwight Hollier Bryan Cox ILB Zach Thomas (r) Chris Singleton RLB Chris Singleton Troy Vincent LCB Terrell Buckley Terrell Buckley RCB Calvin Jackson Michael Stewart SS Michael Stewart Gene Atkins FS Gene Atkins

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