tiggerpolice

Call it a manifestation of visualization.

He'd drive by the Saints' training facility and allow himself to dream about working there. How could he help it?

Up the street a ways is home, St. Rose, where Curtis Johnson lived, attended school and graduated from St. Charles in 1979. And since New Orleans was his recruiting area (because who at the University of Miami possibly could better have known the fertile high school football landscape of the area than he?), it gave him a chance to drop by the facility, visit and reminisce on the team's past, and dream about being part of its future.

Johnson remembers when John Gilliam and Danny Abramowicz joined the Saints in 1967, when Archie Manning was drafted in 1971, when Jim Mora (1986), Mike Ditka (1997) and Jim Haslett (2000) were hired as head coaches.

"I always did like watching the Saints," he said. "I was always a die-hard Saints guy."

So how cool is this? To be, at 44, the Saints wide receivers coach, after constructing a glittering résumé. He recruited and molded players at San Diego State, where Johnson helped the Aztecs land a below-the-radar New Orleans running back named Marshall Faulk, and at Miami, where he corralled safety Ed Reed of St. Rose and receiver Reggie Wayne of Marrero. That's a first-ballot NFL Hall of Famer and two current stars.

To be able to work at home professionally, inside a building and on fields he'd dreamed of working in and on since the place opened in 1996?

"I'm just blessed," he said. "When I was growing up I was just following guys, hoping that one day I could do this."

Feb. 7 became that day.

Call it Johnson's lucky day, though some might suggest joining the Saints has nothing to do with luck, unless "bad" precedes the word.

The NFL team Johnson grew up loving has one playoff victory in its history, one winning record in its previous five seasons, two winning records in the previous 13 years, has wallowed in enough heartbreak to provide material for 10 blues CDs.

And, oh yeah, there's the matter of Hurricane Katrina.

"My mom and my sister lost their homes," Johnson said. "My family is now in Atlanta, living with my younger sister."

But he's here, where he always has wanted to be.

"That was always his goal, to coach in the pros, and he made it," said Saints fan Ryne Mashia of Destrehan, who is three years Johnson's elder but remembers him from living in such close proximity.

"His daddy called him 'Tiger,' because he wanted him to be rough," Mashia said. "He didn't disappoint his father. He has always been a good man.

"I always knew he wanted to come home. The River Parishes is so proud of him. We've got another man in the pros, doing the right thing. His hard work paid off."

So count Johnson among the masses who never quite can get home out of their systems, not even when life takes them away for 20-plus years, his road winding from St. Rose to Idaho (as a college receiver, high school assistant and college assistant at Idaho from 1987 to '88), to San Diego State (as an assistant from 1989 to '93), to SMU (1994), Cal (1995) and Miami (1996-2005).

Count him fortunate, too, because during Johnson's stint at San Diego State, he happened to have a coaching colleague by the name of Sean Payton.

Payton hired Johnson less than a month after Payton was hired as head coach of the Saints.

"He's a tremendous teacher and a guy I know really well, and I am kind of excited to have him," Payton said. "He's a guy who will coach these guys hard. He is from this area, he grew up in New Orleans, and that happens to be a little bit of a convenience and coincidence. But I think he is a real good receivers coach and a great teacher."

Decent supplier, too, since Johnson recruited Faulk to play at San Diego State for running backs coach Sean Payton, before Payton moved up and became quarterbacks coach for the Aztecs.

Call it persistence, because as Payton moved up the coaching ladder, so did Johnson's dream of joining him in the NFL, and the dialogue between them.

Great gig, Johnson had at Miami, churning out NFL-caliber receiver after NFL-caliber receiver, coaching a position where the players would make a very respectable 400-meter relay team, competing for conference and national titles year after year. But he kept contact with Payton, a rising star in the NFL ranks who turned down at least one head-coaching offer, with the Oakland Raiders.

"We've been through this several years," Johnson said, laughing. "Every other year, he was calling me, telling me he was going to get this job or that job. After a while I just told him, 'Call me when you (actually) get the job.'

"I think I made him mad; he didn't call me for a little while after he got the (Saints) job."

When Payton did, it was a no-brainer.

Johnson jumped, body and soul first, and plunged into the unknown, when compared with the comfort level he'd established at Miami.

Call it the newest, biggest challenge of Johnson's career.

He might be a good coach -- an excellent one, even. But he's unproven on the pro level, a "college" coach who has to make his bones.

"They've been receptive," Johnson said of the Saints' receivers. "Wherever you go, they're going to 'try' (test) you. Hopefully, the information I give them, they'll see it as productive and helpful.

"I'm new at this. I try to be as transparent as I can. I tell them I'm not going to know everything. I just try to do the best I can. I try to coach them, befriend them, be there for them if they need anything.

"They've been receptive. But it's a honeymoon right now, and I know that. I expect it to get a lot tougher."

No doubt, it will. But at least Johnson has something to lean on, something comforting to wrap his arms around and to wrap arms around him when, and if, things get a little rocky for the Saints.

http://www.nola.com/saints/t-p/index...0071275850.xml

hagan714

good luck, a gallon of stick'em and he is a set to go. welcome home