When he’s not hallucinating in the heat during practice — he says he saw the devil Tuesday morning — Carl Johnson envisions himself as a left tackle with dancer’s feet, as smooth and nimble as he is strong and powerful. If it’s a matter of choice, left tackle is where he plays. If it’s a matter of what the team needs, position doesn’t matter.
At 6-6 and 340 in shape pounds — he was more than 360 when he arrived on campus four years ago — Johnson is flexible and athletic enough to do cartwheels and handsprings. For a big guy he can really run and when he pulls out in front of a running back on a toss sweep he is a 180-pound cornerback’s worst nightmare.
Tackle is where he wants to play. It’s the place he thinks he was born to play, but there is that pragmatic side of him. He is well aware that he doesn’t have a 2008 national championship ring if he wasn’t willing and capable enough to fill the void at left guard. When Johnson moved inside and took over at left guard in 2008, the Gators went on a 10-game winning streak and the offense became virtually impossible to stop on a consistent basis.
“In my heart I want to play tackle but if the team needs me at guard, then I’ll do it,” Johnson said. “I can’t be selfish. Tim Tebow and Brandon Spikes came back for a special senior year and I want to do my part so it will be special for them.”
Johnson arrived on campus with Tebow and Spikes as part of a 2006 recruiting class that has a chance to go down as one of the great classes in history. A national championship in 2009 to go with the ones earned in 2006 and 2008 would forever seal a place in history for the recruiting class of 2006.
While Tebow had a vital role in that 2006 championship and Spikes was the understudy to Brandon Siler at middle linebacker, Johnson took a redshirt to shed some of the extra tonnage. He still wasn’t in great shape in 2007, which has everything to do with why he spent most games on the bench except for extra point and field goal duty.
His break came at Arkansas last season when he earned his first starting assignment. The Gators rushed for more than 300 yards that day, which was sort of a jump start to the remainder of the season. It is no small coincidence that Florida’s offense found extra gears from the moment Carl Johnson became the starter at left guard. His presence gave the offensive line chemistry and a third (Mike and Maurkice Pouncey are the other two) mean, nasty presence in the middle. Florida finished the season scoring 611 points and averaging 231 yards per game on the ground. In games 1-4, the Gators averaged 35.4 points and 153.8 yards per game rushing. After Johnson stepped in, they averaged 46.9 points and 262.1 rushing yards per game.
Johnson was more than ready to take on the challenge of playing left guard. Cross-trained to play every position on the offensive line, it was just a matter of answering the bell when his time came.
“Our coaches make sure the linemen know every single position,” he said. “There is no excuse for a right guard to go down and me to go to right guard and not know what I’m supposed to do because you’re supposed to know from right tackle all the way to left tackle.”
The cross-training is tough, particularly at this time of August that Urban Meyer calls “the dog days.” It’s blast furnace hot and the humidity turns each session into a sweat-a-thon. Those things add to the difficulty of adjusting mentally to position changes. Friday, Saturday and Monday, Johnson worked at left tackle. Tuesday he was at left guard.
“The hardest thing is when you’re bouncing around,” Johnson said. “It’s just like a basketball player. He has top find his groove and it’s hard to get a groove if you’re always moving to different positions but if you’re a ball player that’s what you’re supposed to do, play ball.”
So no matter where he is told to line up, he knows he has a job to do and there are no excuses for failing to get the job done.
Given his choice, he would be a left tackle. He was rated second just behind Notre Dame’s Sam Young as the best tackle prospect in the country coming out of high school. He says he has a passion for the position and the determination to prove he can handle the kind of rush ends that get their start in the Southeastern Conference before moving on to the National Football League.
But where he would like to play and what he will do for the team are two different things and the team always takes precedent.
“Sometimes you have to set your personal goals aside for a bigger cause,” he said.
The bigger cause is another championship and Johnson is well aware that championships are won in the trenches. He is a huge man whose easy grin and quick wit off the field are in stark contrast to the pain inflicting dominator on the field.
And while some offensive lines set numerical goals, the goals for Florida’s offensive line are summed up in the words “do your job.” If all five guys on the offensive line simply do their jobs, they will function as one and whether it’s a pass play or a running play, the Gators will keep the chains moving and the scoreboard lighting up.
“If you do your job those things will take care of themselves,” Johnson said. “Block who you’re supposed to block, make the calls your supposed to make, run off the ball and hit somebody and you won’t have to worry about protecting Tim Tebow because your job will make sure he’s protected.”
Doing his job also means understanding that practicing in the repressive Florida heat will actually pay dividends down the line. The heat makes practice a daily grind but it serves the purposes of toughening him up physically and especially mentally.
“You have to be mentally tough,” he said. “That’s the reason why we do it. In the fourth quarter, everything is on the line. You saw the national championship game (Florida dominated the fourth quarter). We train in the heat, when it’s hot, when it’s tough for the fourth quarter.”
Carl Johnson knows what it’s like to be tougher than the guy across the line from him in the fourth quarter and he wants to feel that adrenaline rush that comes from dominating his opponent and looking up at the scoreboard to see the Gators have won again. He knows that it’s all about the wins no matter where he lines up.