Overnight success: Chad Johnson's emergence as one of the game's elite receivers wasn't really all that sudden. It was the result of a work ethic that drives him to study deep into the night and often to sleep at the Bengals' facility

Sporting News, The, Oct 4, 2004 by Dennis Dillon

"I think he could be misunderstood at times because of his passion for the game," says Sanders, who came out of retirement this season to join the Ravens but was inactive for Sunday's game because of a hamstring injury. "He just wants to dominate and win on every play."

There are some fascinating brush strokes in the Johnson portrait. During games, he wears a pair of gold-plated removable bridges over his four front teeth, top and bottom. He calls them "my mouthpiece." During a game in Buffalo two years ago, the bottom bridge fell out when he blocked Bills cornerback Nate Clements. Johnson didn't realize he had lost it until a few series later, when he found it on the field.

When the Bengals are on the road, Johnson rides on the first bus--sitting among owner Mike Brown, coach Marvin Lewis, other team officials and staff members and the media--instead of one of the two player buses. Johnson is the only player on the lead bus. "It's quiet on there," he says. "I zone out and get my mind right."

If he needs a break from watching tape at night, Johnson visits the Bengals' coaches. On the Tuesday night before the opener against the Jets, he walked into offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski's office. At first, he asked to look at the game plan. Then he told Bratkowski not to show it to him. "It felt like Christmas Eve," recalls Johnson. "I couldn't wait to wake up in the morning to see what we were going to do."

At Miami Beach High School, where he played receiver, quarterback and punter and snapped for extra points, Johnson had a habit of sucking his thumb when he was on the sideline listening to the coaches. He sometimes still sucks his thumb--the left one--when he is sitting in deep thought.

Then there is his circuitous route to the NFL. After high school, he went to Langston (Okla.) University, where he didn't play football and flunked out after one year. He then moved to Los Angeles, where his mother was living, and sandwiched two seasons of junior college football (1997 and '99) at Santa Monica College around one year of academic ineligibility.

With one year of college football eligibility left, he wound up at Oregon State--then coached by Dennis Erickson--in 2000. He didn't arrive until two weeks before the season, and it took him weeks to learn the offense. At times, wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh, now one of his Bengals teammates, had to flash hand signals from the other side of the field so Johnson would know what routes to run.

At Oregon State, Johnson caught 37 passes for 806 yards and eight touchdowns, including two against Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl. He was invited to play in the Senior Bowl, where he caught seven passes for 93 yards.

Suddenly, Johnson had moved onto the NFL's radar. Then he messed up at the Scouting Combine, where he slipped at the start of his 40-yard dash. He was timed in the high 4.5s, which would have been impressive--if he had been a lineman. He pouted and performed poorly overall in the other drills.

Weeks later, at a private workout at a Los Angeles high school, Johnson ran a 4.44 40. But by then, NFL teams had taken closer inspection. What they saw made them nervous about making him a first-round pick. Johnson dropped to the second round of the 2001 draft, where the Bengals took him with the 36th overall selection.