**
RB CHRIS JOHNSON**
*(on him wanting to stay a running back after high school despite being recruited for other positions) *
"Yeah I wanted to be a running back, that was my dream to be a running back in this league. I came out, when I was coming out of high school I was like 155 pounds so it scared a lot of schools away or whatever. Thanks to ECU and Coach Odom for giving me that opportunity."
*(on how critical it was for him that ECU didn't try to change his position) *
"It was a tough situation coming out of high school, I didn't have any big offers or anything from breaking my leg senior year so it was a tough thing that I had to go through. And eventually it all worked out."
*(on making up classes in college) *
"I had to make up more than one class. I redid like four classes and I was in night school almost every day. Almost every day I was in school and stuff like that. They helped me get my GPA up and then I finally passed the SAT."
*(on other schools recruiting you as a RB) *
"Eastern Kentucky, they wanted me to play running back. Probably some other smaller schools. I wanted to go to a D1 school, I didn't want go to D1-AA, I didn't want to go to D2, so I just really didn't pay many of those much schools much attention because I knew I wouldn't be happy going there."
*(on if he feels he has to outperform Maurice Jones-Drew) *
"I go into every game looking like that. But this game in particular you have to look at the facts in the last six games, whoever rushed for the most yards, that team won the game. Whoever rushes for the most yards as a team should be okay."
*(on if he thinks other teams are trying to stop his run game even more this year) *
"I think no matter what I say, they're going to try to do the same thing. They're going to put all those guys in the box and try to stop us because they know we're a running team, we like to run the ball. So I think they would have tried that anyways."
(on the relationship between him and Maurice Jones-Drew)
"We talk every once in awhile, he's a cool guy. He's a great running back, I love what he does out there on the field but we usually have a good conversation like that. He's a cool dude."
(on the differences between his running style and MJD's running style)
"Maurice Jones-Drew is a pounder. He's got that breakaway speed and when he gets off speed he can make people miss. He's a brute of a runner."
(on if the team sees Monday's game as critical)
"I would say it's still early. It's going to be a long race. We've got a long season to go. And usually in the AFC, you really don't know until the end of the year so we understand we're going to play them twice and Houston twice and we still got to play the Colts twice it's still early."
*(on Coach (Earnest) Byner's excitement in watching him and MJD) *
"Coach Byner's a cool dude. My old coach. It's going to be interesting to go up against him and just to see him on the sidelines."
