Name One Johnson, You Get Them All

Mike Valpredo knew what his good friend Rob Johnson had been going through the last two years. So when he heard that Johnson was starting at quarterback for the Buffalo Bills in a wild-card playoff game today against the Tennessee Titans, he couldn’t wait to pick up the phone.

“I said, ‘Man, I wish you could see the smile on my face right now, I am so proud of you,’ ” said Valpredo, who met Johnson on a Del Mar beach 15 years ago. “And then Rob says, ‘Have you seen [the movie] “The Green Mile?” ’ I said, ‘Man, what planet are you on?’ But that’s Rob.”

By now, Johnson’s friends and family are used to his steering the conversation away from football. Even Johnson’s father, Bob, who coached Rob at El Toro High, will usually leave the topic alone.

“The last thing we talk about is football,” said Bob Johnson, now coaching at Mission Viejo High. “What’s the point? We’d rather go shoot pool, play darts or bowl.”

Little did the Johnsons know that while they were bowling on a dreary Monday morning in Buffalo, Bill Coach Wade Phillips was inserting Johnson into the lineup ahead of Doug Flutie. Rob Johnson was bowling left-handed with a hat pulled down low, trying his best to stay out of the public eye.

Lately, that hasn’t been hard to do.

After prolific high school and college careers at El Toro and USC, Johnson had all but dropped out of sight. A fourth-round pick of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 1995, Johnson has started only eight games in five NFL seasons.

So when Bob and Debbie Johnson learned their son was starting the last game of the regular season against the Indianapolis Colts, they cut short a vacation to Yosemite and flew to Buffalo. They were with him for many of the lows--the NFL draft and four games this season during which Rob never left the sideline--they were certainly going to be there for the highs.

And were there ever highs, and high-fives, last Sunday at Ralph Wilson Stadium. Johnson completed 24 of 32 passes for 287 yards and two touchdowns in the Bills’ 31-6 victory over the Colts, one of the AFC’s best teams.

“If you ever go to a game with Bob Johnson, you’ll know it,” Valpredo said. “Because your hand will be swollen afterward from all the high-fives.”

While the Johnsons were whooping it up in a luxury box, older brother Bret was perched high atop the end zone, watching the game unfold as if he were playing it himself.

“I like to see things the way he’s seeing it,” said Bret, who played at UCLA, Michigan State and a year in the Canadian Football League with the Toronto Argonauts. “Usually, I’ll go back up to the box after the first few series. But when Rob took them down the field for touchdowns the first three series, I stayed. I didn’t want to be the reason the train fell off the tracks.”

A close-knit but superstitious bunch, these Johnsons. Bret probably will wear the same game-day clothes in Nashville today that he wore in Buffalo. Bob will be at the stadium this morning at 7, doing his usual six or seven laps around the field. Before Rob takes the field, he will have watched his 2-year-old nephew Brock’s latest good-luck video.

“The first touchdown dance tape worked so well last week, we had to shoot Act 2,” said Bret, who works for a fire protection company in Anaheim and is the quarterback coach for his dad at Mission Viejo.

Debbie Johnson will watch as much of the game as her queasy stomach allows, but she will feel good knowing her son is starting again.

“He lost his job so unceremoniously,” she said. “Sometimes, what goes around comes around.”

Johnson, who signed a $25-million, five-year contract with Buffalo in 1998 after being acquired from Jacksonville, began last season as the starter. But a rib injury in the fifth game forced him out of the lineup. By the time his ribs healed, “Flutiemania” had consumed Buffalo and Johnson was simply a high-paid backup.

“Doug played well, and they made the decision to keep going with him,” Bob Johnson said. “That wouldn’t necessarily be the decision I would make, but that’s why I’m a high school coach and they are pro coaches.”

What Johnson will never understand is how his son became only a fourth-round pick after setting USC records with 58 touchdown passes, 8,472 yards, 676 completions, and by completing 64.6% of his passes.

“I think they realized they had made a mistake,” Johnson said, “Because Rob was the first pick of the second day.”

But Johnson, who led El Toro to three Southern Section titles, acknowledges he hasn’t been a perfect talent evaluator either.

“I thought Bret and Rob would be in the NFL for a long time,” he said. “I was wrong with Bret and right with Rob. Rob’s a prototype guy. He’s 6-4, takes cares of himself, has an arm and he’s cerebral.”

And extremely patient.

“He’s taken the high road and I’m proud of that. That’s very, very hard to do when you live with certain things that you feel are unfair.”

Debbie Johnson said her son has kept his frustrations to himself.

“He’s not a down person,” she said. “He hasn’t made it difficult to be around him. It’s been hard on us because we know what he wants.”

And now that he’s getting what he wants, the family can hardly believe it. Bob had to listen to almost half of the 15 messages on his answering machine before it sank in that Rob was starting against the Titans.

“We’re happy as hell,” Bob said. “I don’t get this. A lot of people don’t. But I also see it. Rob moves the team. He’s a player and that’s why they got him.”