RB Chris Johnson ‘would love to be back’ with Arizona Cardinals

TEMPE, Ariz. – The call has yet to come.

Should it, Arizona Cardinals running back Chris Johnson is ready to answer.

“It’s a possibility. I was voted as an alternate (to the 2016 Pro Bowl) so just sitting around waiting on that and see what happens,” he said this week.

The Pro Bowl is Sunday at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu.

Johnson led the Cardinals in rushing with 814 yards despite missing the last five games plus the entire postseason run.

Against San Francisco, Johnson suffered a left leg injury and was placed on the injured reserve-designated to return list on Dec. 1.

His return would have been Super Bowl 50.

But with the Cardinals losing the NFC Championship Game, 49-15, to Carolina, there is no trip planned to Santa Clara for Johnson, or any of his teammates.

There remains, though, the possibility of a trip to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl, which would be his fourth career appearance in the all-star exhibition.

“It’s not the Super Bowl, but it’s another game to play,” Johnson said. “Coming from not thinking I was going to be able to play to being able to be on this team with all this success, make it to the playoffs and to get a Pro Bowl on top of that would be good, too.”

At the moment, only two of the Cardinals’ seven Pro Bowlers will play in the game. Justin Bethel and Calais Campbell are in Hawaii, while Carson Palmer, Larry Fitzgerald, Mike Iupati and Patrick Peterson have all bowed out.

Tyrann Mathieu was selected but was never going to play after suffering a season-ending knee injury two days before the Pro Bowl announcement.

Barring a last-minute withdrawal, Johnson will instead place his focus on 2016.

Johnson is set to become an unrestricted free agent, one of 17 on the Cardinals’ roster.

“Just praying that the right situation happens for me. Would love to be back here,” he said. “I’m going to take a couple of weeks off and just see where I go from there.”

Johnson joined the Cardinals two weeks into training camp after injuries to Andre Ellington and David Johnson left a void at the running back position.

Chris Johnson, who became the sixth player in NFL history to break 2,000 rushing yards with 2,006 yards in 2009, had been waiting for a chance to resume his pro career. Teams, though, appeared to shy away from the eight-year veteran following an offseason incident in which he was shot in the shoulder during a drive-by in Orlando.

“I didn’t think I would be playing football this year, so being able to make it to the playoffs and then the Championship Game, it was just a blessing,” Johnson said, referring to his season in Arizona.

Johnson began the season as a backup but then assumed the starter’s role when Ellington got hurt Week 1.

Johnson ran with the opportunity, literally.

Four times he topped 100 rushing yards, tying the single-season franchise mark set by Stump Mitchell, currently the team’s running backs coach, in 1985. Among Johnson’s efforts was a season-best 122 yards against Baltimore on Monday Night Football.

He was well on his way to a 1,000-yard season when he got hurt in the third quarter in San Francisco.

Johnson will be 31 next season, which is old by NFL standards, especially at his position.

Johnson, though, hardly sounded like a player ready to call it a career as he cleaned out his locker on Monday. Rather, he was already looking ahead to the possibility of an all-Johnson backfield.

“Me and David, we’re two different types of players,” he said, speaking of the rookie who replaced him in the lineup. “He can go out into the five-receiver sets and do a lot of those plays that B.A. (head coach Bruce Arians) likes to run. Even like before I got hurt the kind of situation that me and David had, I was doing a lot of the running. He was still coming in doing a lot of the running and doing a lot of the pass plays and stuff like that, so I think it’s something that could work.”

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