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This Tank isn’t invulnerable By J. BRADY McCOLLOUGH Tank Johnson was a hero last Sunday. Johnson, a Bears defensive tackle, sacked Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck in the final minute of regulation, moving Seattle out of field-goal range in a tie game. Of course, the Bears won 27-24 in overtime, and Johnson was a major reason that Chicago is playing New Orleans in the NFC championship game on Sunday. He swooped in, he rescued the girl, but Tank can’t fly away. Why? Because now, people know way too much about him. They know that he was arrested for possession of six unregistered firearms last month. They know that his roommate and best friend, Willie Posey, was shot and killed in a Chicago nightclub, supposedly sticking up for Tank. And they know that the day before, Tank Johnson swore he would stay out of trouble. So on Wednesday, as reporters were overflowing in the Bears’ locker room, Tank spoke in front of his locker for about a half-hour when he could have been eating a conveniently timed lunch in the Halas Hall cafeteria instead. Players under much less scrutiny avoid the open locker room all the time. But Johnson, of all people, talked. He talked about being a man, and he fielded every uncomfortable question asked without once getting truly agitated. “What’s happened to me could have happened to any man,” Johnson said. “As a man, you handle it and you put it on your shoulders and you deal with it like a man.” Johnson was pressed to explain what he meant by being a man. “I’m a father, a father of two little girls,” said Johnson, 25. “Being a man is much more than this game of football.” But make no mistake, Johnson needs football right now. He’s on house-arrest, so he can’t do much else. “I don’t want to think about losing on Sunday,” Johnson said. Yes, if the Bears lose Sunday, there wouldn’t be anymore questions about how to stop Reggie Bush and Deuce McAllister. There would only be real-life questions, much like the one asked of him Wednesday: “It’s clear you adore your daughters. But what do you say to people who say you might have put them in harm’s way with the loaded guns?” Johnson didn’t answer that or any other pointed question about his ongoing trial. But when talking about football, he’s one of the go-to guys in the Bears’ locker room. He’s thoughtful, intelligent, not a guy you would expect to own a rifle built by the Israeli military. Johnson is also not a guy you’d expect to be so disruptive in his neighborhood that 30 calls were made about him to the Gurnee, Ill., police department in the last two years. Gurnee is a peaceful suburb of Chicago. Commander Jay Patrick says that there hasn’t been a gun-related offense in Gurnee in at least two years. In other words, it’s not a place that you would need more than 500 rounds of ammunition, as Johnson is claimed to have had. The Bears stood by Johnson when news broke of the raid of his home. Johnson talked with Chicago reporters the next day and said he’d learned his lesson, while the Bears said Johnson couldn’t screw up again. The next night, Johnson and Posey — clearly gunless after the raid — went to the Ice Bar, known as an up-scale, exclusive club in the city. There, it is reported that a man tried to pick a fight with Tank. Posey, who worked as a bodyguard for his 6-foot-3, 300-pound friend, stepped in and was killed. News of Posey’s death and Tank’s late-night excursion traveled quickly to Halas Hall. Bears general manager Jerry Angelo told a local radio station, “I wanted to cut him and get rid of him right there. I was hot.” But Angelo didn’t, electing instead to suspend Johnson for one game. It’s possible that the light disciplinary action had something to do with the fact that Pro-Bowl defensive tackle Tommie Harris is out for the season. It would appear that the Bears need Tank Johnson to make the Super Bowl. Through it all, Johnson’s teammates have buoyed him. “Tank’s situation is not a football issue,” Bears tight end Desmond Clark said. “It’s a brotherhood issue. You don’t want to see him go through hurt and pain. The guy was down, and you try your best to pick him up.” Tank returned for the Green Bay game on New Year’s Eve. That was hard, but he got through it. And against Seattle, he made one of the biggest plays of the game. That is tougher to stomach for some Bears fans than for others. Take Jennifer Bishop. She’s a diehard. Cries when they win, cries when they lose. She’s “hanging breathlessly,” waiting for Sunday. But Bishop’s was affected by gun violence. In 1990, her pregnant sister and husband were gunned down by a teenage boy who had stolen a gun. Bishop doesn’t know how to feel when she sees No. 99 of the Bears on the field. “It’s been very difficult,” said Bishop, who is the Illinois field director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “I love the Bears, and I love the game. I know it’s big money and all that. But emotionally, the gun issue is just so much more profoundly important than any game.” Commander Patrick said that Johnson bought his guns in Arizona and brought them with him to Chicago. In Arizona, all you need is a driver’s license to buy a gun. In Illinois, you have to have a registration card. Mark Eiaz, an employee at Mike Schrank’s Smoke’N Gun in Waukegan, Ill., says it’s very likely Johnson would not have known the gun laws in Illinois. “I have been taught since the earliest days,” Bishop said, “ignorance of the laws is not an excuse.” Bishop said there is no practical use for a semi-automatic rifle like the one Johnson owned. “We’re talking about weapons that don’t have any purpose but to kill people,” she says. But Larry Pratt, the executive director of the Gun Owners of America, thinks Tank has gotten a bum deal. He says Illinois’ gun laws are “backward” and Arizona is a “free state.” “This man is helping keep the community safe,” Pratt says. “By taking his guns away, they’ve taken away his ability to protect himself. Just because his first name is Tank doesn’t mean he doesn’t have anything to worry about.” Yes, Tank has a lot to worry about these days. He doesn’t even know for sure whether he can play in the Super Bowl in Miami if the Bears do win. And if the Bears lose, he’ll have to face the mourning of his friend without football as a distraction. Johnson, like Bishop, is now affected by gun violence. As an NFL player, he’d certainly have the platform to discuss a change of heart about guns, if he has one. “If this is like the wake-up call from hell that totally changes his life around,” Bishop said, “then I’d love to work with him. There’s a lot of good that could come out of it. He could be a person to go talk to kids in neighborhoods about life decisions.” That would certainly be heroic. But, in the meantime, the
Bears would settle for more heroism on the field.
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J. Brady McCollough - jbrady@coveringsports.com (email) - 816-868-2621 (cell) |
