So there has been a lot of talk this week about how much of the load Chris Johnson should carry on Sunday since he hasn't practiced before this week. Mike Munchak was asked about it yesterday at his press conference:
I think we will be aware of that but not necessarily. We are not going to sit here and tell you he may only get X amount of carries because it depends how those carries go. Hopefully they are all big runs and he will have less carries. We are going to be smart with it for sure with the weather and the humidity; those are factors for running backs. Even if he was here all camp, we would be having the same conversations about Javon (Ringer) running a little bit more for him this year. The dialog will be a little more about that like we did with (LenDale) White. With LenDale they kind of split it more so that’s always in the equation, but there is no doubt that we are going to be aware of his carries and kind of see how his conditioning is once we get going. It’s hard to tell that during the week. During the week you will see more about his cuts and decision making and those things, but until you get in a game, even for the rest of your team, you really don’t know where you are at when you go from preseason to the regular season, for every player in this building and everyone in this league. No one really knows how anyone is going to be because you haven’t played 60 or 70 snaps yet or played in the weather and football is a lot different that first month of the season then it is once you get going. For CJ it’s going to just be a little different because he hasn’t been here but it’s something we will have to be smart about.
I really like that he is talking about the way things were done when LenDale was here. That might mean that this staff is not going to be determined to run CJ into the ground no matter what. That will be a refreshing change.
I would expect Johnson to get somewhere between 14-16 carries on Sunday, but that can obviously change depending on the situation during the game.