By David Steele | SportingNews.com
No matter what stories Terry Johnson tells rookies at the NFL’s annual symposium, this or any other year, it will be hard to top one about how he and Roger Goodell became friends.
“I can pick up the phone and speak to him at any time, whenever I need to, about anything,’’ Johnson said Monday from the Cleveland suburb of Aurora, Ohio, where this year’s symposium opened on Sunday. “We’ve had a close relationship since 2006."
That happens to be the year that Johnson—then the Bears’ third-year defensive tackle better known as “Tank”—was arrested after a police raid of his home turned up an arsenal of unregistered guns, his second gun-related arrest in 13 months.
In June 2007, Goodell suspended him for the first eight games of that season, one of three harsh suspensions in a three-week span (Adam “Pacman” Jones and Chris Henry were the others) that stamped Goodell as the sheriff out to clean up the NFL.
Johnson, now 32 and who prefers to go by his given first name, doesn’t see the commissioner that way, and hasn’t since even before his suspension, when the two met in a disciplinary hearing in the league office. Johnson last played in 2010.
At the time, he foreshadowed his future role when he told reporters: "One day I want to be the face of the league for guys who have come through adversity, came through it and ultimately became the Man of the Year in the NFL. That would be a tremendous ending to the story."
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