LJ runs into trouble again

The next time an athlete thanks God for blessing him with the ability to juke defenders out of their shoes and rack up hundreds of yards and millions of dollars, he should pause and thank the person who really makes it happen - his high-priced lawyer.

Case in point: Kansas City Chiefs' running back Larry Johnson. A couple years removed from being the most dominant player in the game, LJ's career has spiralled after a series of injuries and night-club incidents, that have sent him down the path where so many talented running backs have gone before. Remember Lawrence Phillips? Maurice Clarett? Jamal Lewis? Ricky Williams? Cedric Benson? Rasham Salaam? The Whizzinator, AKA Onterrio Smith?

The latest LJ escapade involves the Chief spitting his drink on a woman in a bar and then threatening to kill her boyfriend. Classy. I always like to buy women I'm trying to mac on a drink and then spit it in their face, before I threaten to kill their significant other. Maybe this is what constitues foreplay these days.

If this weren't alarming enough and cause for the Chiefs to suspend their star, LJ's troubling history with women would be.
Chiefs' president Carl Peterson told the Kansas City Star he was "very disappointed" by LJ's latest scandal, but wouldn't go further than to say the team was investigating it. However as this CBS Sportsline.com article goes on to detail, LJ has had three very disturbing prior incidents involving violent or aggressive behaviour towards women. In one he was accused of shoving a woman to the ground, in another he allegedly waived a gun in the air after a dispute with a former girlfriend and then last February he was charged with assault for shoving a woman in the face in a bar. While he has so far eluded prosecution for any of these, it doesn't make him the kind of guy you'd want to bring home to meet mom.

Johnson's most recent trangression occurred while the Chiefs were enjoying a bye week, after starting the season 1-4. The night he spat his G&T in the woman's face came just five days after he managed just 2 yards on 7 carries against the Carolina Panthers on October 5. If you take out his 198-yard, 2-TD game against the Broncos - a team that is yielding nearly 400 yards of offense a game - then LJ is averaging just 3.37 yards per carry (219 yards on 65 carries), with just one TD and two fumbles. Hardly what the Chiefs expected when they made him the highest-paid running back in the NFL with a $45-million, 5-year deal in 2007.

Maybe former Chiefs' head coach Dick Vermeil was right when he questioned LJ's maturity by telling the media in 2004 it was time for the first-round draft pick to "take the diaper off and go play."