How Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson’s biggest victory was knowing when to quit, and why | Opinion
Twenty years earlier, to the day, Jimmy Johnson quit the NFL in despair, at a low point in his life. He retired from coaching and never looked back. It ended for him on January 15, 2000, on a football field in Jacksonville, his Miami Dolphins eliminated in the second round of the playoffs in a 62-7 humiliation.
That wasn’t the worst of it. The recent death of his mother had hit him hard, hit him soul-deep, made him rethink everything. One of his two sons was struggling with alcohol addiction. It felt like his life was getting away from him.
Wayne Huizenga, then the Dolphins owner, desperately tried to convince Johnson to stay — even offering to let him be a part-time head coach who handled the draft and worked only home games — but Johnson had to get out.
“I needed to spend time with my family, and it paid dividends,” the former coach was saying Wednesday, 20 years later, from his home 90 minutes south of Miami in the Upper Keys. “My two sons, we’re as close now as we’ve ever been. I am happier than I’ve ever been. Retiring from coaching — it saved my family.”
Sunday night, the NFL told Johnson he had done enough. He got out early because he felt he had to. But he had done enough.
It was halftime of the Seahawks-Packers playoff game when suddenly a representative of the Pro Football Hall of Fame walked onto the “Fox NFL Sunday” set, shook Johnson’s and welcomed him, live on national television, into the sport’s highest pantheon.
“My wife Rhonda was watching and she said, ‘I don’t think you were breathing the whole time he was talking!’” Johnson said, smiling. “I was shocked. I’d been getting ready to talk about the Seattle defense. Our producer knew it, but none of the rest of us knew it.”
Johnson wept, struggling to hide it, when he spoke his gratitude. An audience of 33 million watched.
“I’m pretty guarded with my emotions,” he said Wednesday, “but that was the happiest moment of my entire career.”
He and his Fox crew, which Johnson joined fulltime in 2002 after leaving the Dolphins, celebrated at an Italian restaurant that night, when one can imagine a few of Jimmy’s favorite Heineken Lights might have been clinked in his honor. On the flight home from Los Angeles on Monday his phone held so many congratulatory texts there was no time to answer them all, so for expedience he began sending back smiley-face emojis.
Accolades have poured forth.
“My coach turned men into CHAMPIONS on every level,” tweeted old Cane Michael Irvin.
“You changed my life forever,” wrote Jason Taylor.
Johnson is in the Hall at last primarily because he resurrected the Dallas Cowboys from 1989 to 1993, winning two Super Bowls. (“I wish I’d got a patent on ‘How ‘bout them Cowboys!’” he said). But he succeeded with the Dolphins (1996-99), too, making the playoffs three of four years and drafting the likes of Jason Taylor and Zach Thomas.
The football writers who vote for the Hall kept passing Johnson over, though. After all, his 89 career wins rank only a modest 51st all time.
But this year to mark the NFL’s 100th season a blue-ribbon panel of actual football people voted, and they knew better.
“When [Bill] Belichick talks in your favor, people listen,” as Johnson put it.
The coach’s first big break, of course, came with the Miami Hurricanes from 1984 to 1988, when he won the ‘87 national championship and recruited in a way that led to more winning when he left for Dallas. If The U invented swagger, like those T-shirts say, J.J. was the father of it.
“I’m from Port Arthur, Texas, and I played at the University of Arkansas, but my home is in South Florida and my love is for the University of Miami,” he says. “I love living down here and I loved coaching at UM.”
Johnson hopes the stalwart former middle linebacker Thomas joins him in the Hall of Fame when 2020 player inductees are announced just before the Super Bowl Miami is hosting. Thomas has been deserving for years but finally is a finalist. Johnson plucked Thomas out of the fifth round, seeing in him what others’ expert eyes failed to.
“In nearly 40 years of coaching I never had a player prepare as well or as thoroughly as Zach,” Johnson said. “He rarely if ever made a mistake. I’m hoping and doing everything I can to influence people.”
Jimmy Johnson is 76 now, a youthful 76, in great shape and an avid deep-sea fisherman from the boat he named “Three Rings” for his championships as an Arkansas player then as Hurricanes and Cowboys coach.
He was the first coach to win both a college national championship and a Super Bowl. He is now in both sports’ halls of fame. He is a beloved figure in Miami, which loves him back, and his accomplishment on football sidelines (and in draft rooms) fashions a legacy secure.
Football does not define Johnson, though. Not in the end. It isn’t big enough.
As gifted as he was as a coach, it was his knowing how and when and why to quit — because “it saved my family” — that sets this man apart.
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 11:53 AM.
