Shields, unshielded

By Aug 10, 2015, 5:17 PM EDT

CANTON, Ohio – Will Shields arrives in Canton Wednesday evening with his wife, Senia, and there’s something that feels a little bit out of place for him. In three days, he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame? He never thought about the Hall of Fame. Heck, he never thought about ANYTHING except the next game, the next play, the next block.

See, there was a word people used all the time when they talked about the football player Will Shields: “Professional.” It’s a pretty bland word, if you think about it. At its core, it simply means someone who gets paid for an activity as opposed to doing it for a hobby. Professional fisherman. Professional golfer. Professional race car driver. That sort of thing.

On the next level, perhaps, it means something more – professional comes to represent someone who does expert work. That’s a professional paint job. We need a professional to fix the leaky sink. We can’t handle this problem by ourselves, we must get a professional.

But with Will Shields, “professional” meant more than all that. It was a vibe he extended, an energy that radiated from him. This man did what needed to be done, day after day, week after week, year after year, and everyone around him watched with muted awe. He played the most unnoticed position on the football field, offensive guard … guards might as well play in camouflage. And yet he played every week with zeal and equilibrium. He never missed a start, not one. He never said a word about himself, he never griped about an injury or an opponent’s foul play. He never made an excuse or offered a detailed explanation, he never spoke a negative word about a teammate or coach. He never showed up unprepared for a game or a practice or even a meeting.

Yes, when people talked about Will Shields in Kansas City, around the AFC West, around the NFL, they kept repeating that word. Professional. Will Shields is a professional. No, he’s a consummate professional. He’s a pro’s pro.

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So he arrives in Canton to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, there with John Unitas and Tony Dorsett and Jim Brown, there with his contemporaries like Jerry Rice and John Elway, there with his rivals like John Randle (“Unpredictable, never knew what he would do,” Shields says) and Hall of Fame classmate Junior Seau (“He just never stopped,” Will says). It’s humbling and baffling and, more than anything, confusing.

“I did get to see this a couple of years ago when (former teammate) Willie Roaf went in,” he says when he arrives. “It’s so strange though that it’s happening to me now.”

* * *

A Will Shields story: When Will retired from football, Senia (prounounced SEN-ya) asked him where he wanted to go on vacation. Finally, after all these years, all those collisions, all that grueling work, he was finally free to go anywhere in the world he wanted to go. So where would it be? China? Africa? Australia?

“Hawaii,” Will said.

Senia looked at him as if he was mad. Hawaii? Did he really say Hawaii? The family – Will, Senia, their three children Sanayika, Shavon and Solomon — had been to Hawaii practically every year since Will became a professional football player. He had been elected to a dozen Pro Bowls, for crying out loud. The trip to Honolulu was an annual event on the family calendar.

“Hawaii?” she asked him. “We’ve been on vacation to Hawaii 12 times already.”

“No,” Will quietly corrected her. “YOU have been on vacation in Hawaii 12 times. … I was working.”

* * *

The first thing Will Shields wants to do when he gets to Canton is understand the landscape. This is how Shields’ mind works. What is my job here? What is expected of me? What can I do to exceed those expectations?

The wonder of Pro Football Hall of Fame week is that it blends the biggest and most lucrative sport in America with a sort of quaint 1950s Americana. Inductees stay at the Holiday Inn on Everhard Road. It is next to the Bob Evans Restaurant. Two people stand outside to keep autograph seekers away, though there do not appear to be too many autograph seekers. The hotel is also under construction.

When he arrives, he receives an itinerary with a long list of events – many of them are stamped “MANDATORY.” He also receives a few small gifts including a special Hall of Fame tie.

“Am I supposed to wear this tie for the induction?” he asks Senia.

“I don’t think so,” she says.

“I’m not going to wear it,” he says. “I’ve already got it all worked out, what I’m going to wear.”

He is officially Will Shields III. The first Will Shields was a Texas farmer whose toughness remains legend in the family. Will Shields Jr. – Will’s father – was an army man; he once went to Germany alone for three years so that his family could have a normal life in Lawton, Okla. He called home every single night. Even today, Will Jr. will show up 10 minutes early for everything and when his son invites him to meet the family at a restaurant or an event, he will go to the place the night before to make sure he know what it’s all about. The family calls it his recon missions. Put it this way: Will Jr. knew everything there was to know about Canton long before his son even thought about logistics for this Hall of Fame trip.

So, yes, absolutely, Will Shields III carries the discipline that came with his name. He jokes that now he’s not disciplined at all, but Senia scoffs at the notion. Discipline was always his most powerful weapon. He will tell you: He was a pudgy kid in school. The others kids liked to pick on him. He threw himself into football. He left Lawton to go play at Nebraska, which may be a high crime in the state of Oklahoma, but Shields never saw it that way. He was too practical to allow something as unpredictable as college football passion to influence his choice. Instead, he dispassionately broke down the pros and cons. For instance, some schools wanted him to play defense. In order to play defense, he would have to lose a little weight. That was a con. In order to play offense, however, he would have gain weight. That was a pro.

“I find,” he says now, with a smile on his face, “it’s a lot more fun to go in that direction.”

Nebraska wanted him for offense. Nebraska was famous for developing great offensive linemen. Nebraska felt comfortable to him. Tom Osborne felt like the right head coach. It was the right place. He didn’t just sense it. He KNEW it. Like always, he had done his homework.

“My high school coach is coming,” Shields says as he stands in the lobby of the Holiday Inn. “Coach Osborne is coming. I’m not sure who else is coming. I can’t keep up. It’s overwhelming.”

* * *

A Will Shields story: Well, first a story about my friend Mike. He was an offensive lineman in college, at Kansas State, and he was actually pretty good. I say “actually” because Mike is a humble guy, and he would never let on that he was pretty good.

For instance, there is the story he tells about playing Washington and their superstar defensive lineman Steve Emtman. It would be hard, perhaps even impossible, to recapture the aura of Steve Emtman in college, before injuries wrecked his NFL career. You would hear tales about Emtman’s feats of strength and swear they came out of Marvel comic books. The guy was the first pick in the NFL draft, winner of every lineman award imaginable, and he even finished fourth in the Heisman voting.

Mike wasn’t often responsible for blocking Emtman – Emtman was an interior defensive lineman at Washington then, and Mike was a left tackle who usually blocked defensive ends. But on one play, Emtman came looping around on a stunt, and Mike found himself face to face with the Incredible Hulk.

Emtman picked Mike up, discarded him like an empty McDonald’s bag and went after the quarterback.

Later, Mike found himself on the sideline getting screamed at by the offensive line coach. He understood the sentiment but in his mind he was thinking, “Coach, the guy PICKED ME UP. I mean, what do you want me to do?”

While at Nebraska, Will Shields also played against Washington. Emtman’s legend had grown to the point where Shields thought coming in, “What’s the point? This guy can’t be blocked.” And for the whole first half, Emtman manhandled Shields, toyed with him, made tackle after tackle. Shields went to the locker room at halftime and felt a new rage, something he never felt before.

In the second half, Will Shields hit Emtman, and hit him, and hit him and hit him – so hard, so often, with such force – and toward the end of the game, Shields saw something that he could have never expected. He saw Steve Emtman raise his hand to the sideline. He wanted out of the game.

“After that,” Shields says, “I told myself: ‘Don’t ever do that again. Don’t ever think someone is better than you.’”

* * *

He has so much to do in Canton. There is a media session at the local high school. There are community events throughout. There are a few parties, including a couple at the Holiday Inn. There is a parade through Canton, though Shields feels like he’s on parade all the time, every moment someone else walks up to him. He is sitting at a table in the restaurant when he turns, and there’s Dick Vermeil, his old coach, walking up.

“Big guy,” Vermeil says as he hugs Shields. “I am so proud of you.”

The attention stirs him and it also embarrasses him. He prefers silence. People often misunderstand Will Shields’ quietness. He often will find that he must go up to friends at parties or small gatherings and just say, “Hey, I’m not mad at you.” There’s an intensity that comes off him, like steam. He doesn’t mean to intimidate, at least not most of the time. “I like silence,” he says. “I have all my life.”

He tells a story about one time when he was not silent – that was during his first meeting with the Kansas City Chiefs. Those were confusing times for Shields. He had won the Outland Trophy at Nebraska as college football’s best lineman. He was a consensus All-American. He was the force behind a Cornhuskers running attack that had two thousand-yard rushers and averaged more than 300 yards per game. In other words, he had done every single thing he could have done.

And pro scouts were uninterested. Well, they had been burned by Cornhuskers offensive linemen before. Dave Rimington, Dean Steinkuhler and Mark Traynowicz had all been high draft picks, and none had quite worked out. The word was out that Nebraska linemen couldn’t pass block, that they were simply well-used pawns in the Osborne system.

In total, NFL teams would choose 11 offensive linemen in front of Will Shields in the 1993 draft. He and his future Chiefs teammate Willie Roaf were the most accomplished offensive linemen in college football, but teams took SIX guards before finally getting to Shields. The list included guards Lester Holmes, Ben Coleman, Todd Rucci, John Gerak, Joe Cocozzo and Mike Compton. The Chiefs took Shields midway through the third round, almost as an afterthought.

Why did the Chiefs take him? Well, the team decision makers – general manager Carl Peterson and coach Marty Schottenheimer among them – met with Shields at a college all-star game. They explained to him the many knocks on him. “Basically,” Shields says, “they told me that I wasn’t the biggest, I wasn’t the fastest and I wasn’t the strongest.”

“Prototypes,” Senia says, and you can tell by the way she bites off the word that it isn’t one of her favorites.

The Chiefs told him about a guard they had just signed. They told him how difficult it would be for him to fight through and earn playing time. They hinted that his greatest ambition might be as an NFL backup. It was a thoroughly dispiriting meeting.

And Shields – this is the part that still shocks him – finally looked up and said: “I’ll be a starter. I’ve never been a backup in my whole life. I plan on breaking into the starting lineup.” He could feel the temperature in the room drop just a little.

“They had me under the lights,” he says now, and he’s smiling. “I felt like I was being interrogated. All the coaches are standing against the wall staring at me. … I think that was the most confidence I ever had in a meeting, ever. But it was the only meeting I had with any of the pro teams at all during that whole process so I thought, ‘Man, I’ve got to tell them something.’”

When the Chiefs took him in the third round, Shields felt one overwhelming ambition: He was going to make every one of those teams pay for their lack of faith. He understood why fans might not notice the excellence of an offensive guard – they’re too busy looking the other way – but he could not understand how PROFESSIONALS could miss just how much he brought to the game. “I’m not going to lie,” he says. “It pissed me off.”

In Will Shields’ first game as a Kansas City Chiefs player, guard Dave Szott got hurt. Will Shields went into the game. He started every single game for the rest of his career.

* * *

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A Will Shields story: Have you ever sat through the comically long credits of a Pixar movie? It’s an astonishing thing to do – it makes you realize just how many people it takes to create that sort of movie magic. It is similarly astonishing to see the long list of Will Shields charities. He and Senia have dedicated themselves to what they have broadly divided into three categories: abused and neglected women and children, literacy and scholarships and improved creativity. As you might guess, each of those categories branches out in to dozens and dozens of charities. Shields as a player did so much good that in 2003 when he was finally elected NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year, people around the league wondered: What the heck took so long?

What took so long is that Shields was an offensive guard, the most anonymous of positions. He was the first guard to ever win the award. It mostly goes to quarterbacks, linebackers, running backs and so on.

In time, Shields’ overwhelming dedication to people in need – I’ve never known any athlete more dedicated – was so blindingly obvious that they gave him the award. His heart shined through.

All of this is kind of a funny thing because, as mentioned, Will Shields was anything but a touchy-feely guy. He played football with a deeply felt intensity. His wife and children used to wave to him from the crowd, and they would often ask why he didn’t wave back. So, against his better judgment, he did wave back in two games. Both times, the team played lousy. Both times, Shields felt like he played lousy. He never did that waving bit again.

After games, he would glare as he dressed. Reporters and camera people would gingerly walk up to his locker, see that glare, and quietly sulk away hoping they weren’t noticed. I should know because I was one of those people. It wasn’t just reporters either; teammates were sometimes scared to death of him. One teammate told me that one day Shields would be friendly and open and the next, well, it was like he’d never seen you before in his life. I can tell you that Will Shields was one of my favorite ever people to cover. And, I can tell you, more than once he told me to get the heck away from him.

But this person around children – he was magical. He would fold his giant body somehow to make himself their size. He would read to them. He would buy them Christmas gifts. He would help them find new shoes. It was incredible the depth of heart. “Yes, he has always loved being around children,” Senia says, and then she looks to Will and they both smile as they anticipate the often-repeated punch line. “It was adults that were the problem.”

So the story: I saw Will Shields at a charity event with children this one time, and the kids were surrounding him like usual. Only he would not smile. That was what struck me. Shields just would not smile. He meant nothing by it. He had no idea how intimidating he could look. Here he was playing with the kids, talking to them, helping inspire them to read. He was doing what he always did; trying to make the world a little bit better place. But he still wasn’t not smiling.

“Smile,” Senia whispered to him at one point. “You look so much gentler when you smile.”

“Oh yeah,” Will said. “I keep forgetting.”

* * *

The high school marching band walks through McKinley High School in the moments before the Hall of Fame inductees arrive to talk to the media. “Keep it quiet,” the bandleader says. “Understand what is happening here.”

What is happening here is that some great football players and minds are reminiscing about how they got here. This isn’t something that comes naturally to Will Shields. Part of of being a professional was just doing the job well without spending time to look back or forward. I’ve written about Will Shields for 20 years. Only now does he tell me about the notebooks.

In the Shields household, there are shelves of notebooks where Will Shields scribbled down his plans of attack on the football field. This was the part that nobody but Senia and the family could ever know. See, Shields realized that, clichés aside, he really wasn’t the biggest, the fastest or the strongest. He understood that game after game he would face defenders with otherworldly athletic gifts, and he would face Gordian blitzes designed to pop the fuses in his brain, and he would face an intensity and violence that few of us can understand. He was not superhuman like other offensive linemen. His only counter to the impossibility of being an NFL offensive lineman was to be ready for everything.

So, he would write down everything. He would write down tendencies he saw in opposing players, of course. This guy would have his right foot back two inches when he was pass-rushing. This guy would tilt his head a little bit differently on running plays. Shields says, without hesitation, that the toughest player he ever faced was Minnesota’s John Randle because the guy was unpredictable. You never knew exactly what he was about to do. That was the sort of thing that threw Will Shields. Almost everybody else had a tell of some kind.

But those notes went beyond individual tendencies. He would write down how different defensive coordinators tried to attack. He would go back in family coaching trees and write down the strategies of the coaches who TAUGHT those defensive coordinators. He would write down what every single other player on his team was supposed to be doing – every year, he would copy down the entire playbook just so he could have it. He would scribble down little tricks he learned along the way, small maneuvers that worked against certain kinds of players, blocking schemes that failed miserably.

And after all that, nobody was better prepared to play a football game than Will Shields. He didn’t jump offsides. He didn’t hold. He didn’t miss assignments. He had his teammates’ back (and his quarterback’s) when things went awry.

When coaches had their strategy meetings, Shields already knew everything they were going to say. When teammates on the offensive line got in trouble, Shields had already seen it coming and knew exactly how to help out. For 14 years, he was the rock.

The Chiefs were a Marty Schottenheimer power-running team when he began; his first running back was Hall of Famer Marcus Allen, and his first quarterback was the incomparable Joe Montana. The Chiefs were a Dick Vermeil high-flying offense in his later years; he and Willie Roaf anchored an offensive line that mashed defenses and powered the highest-scoring offense in the NFL. He played through injuries of all sorts – broken bones, torn ligaments, pulled muscles. He once busted up his hand so badly that he had to wear a giant cast during practice. On Sunday, he had the cast removed, he opened his gnarled hand and he played football. He was a professional.

“Yeah, there was some pain,” he says without emotion.

“He’s paying a price,” Senia says. They look at each other knowingly. There will be no excuses and there will be no complaints. There never were.

“I loved playing football,” he says.

* * *

Will Shields is not looking forward to his speech. It isn’t that he’s nervous about it, not exactly. It’s just that, well, the speech is only six minutes long. And, really, what can he do in that time?

“You can’t create a manifesto in six minutes,” he says. We have been talking for a long time about everything from his wedding (“He just called me up and said, ‘What are you doing today?’” Senia says. “I said, ‘Nothing.’ He said, ‘Do you want to just go down and get a marriage license?'”) to the way coaches screamed at him (“It’s really strange, but I didn’t even think about it anymore,” Will says) to his first offensive line coach Alex Gibbs (“He didn’t want Will and didn’t think he could play,” Senia says).

“The speech just is what it is,” Shields says. “I just hope I can thank everybody.”

The week flies by, just like Shields knew it would. He has been told by Hall of Famers that the time you REALLY enjoy the Hall is the year after you’re inducted. Then you get to come back and there are few events, no responsibilities, no anxiety. You can just walk around, somewhat unnoticed, and talk football. And you can see your bust there in the Hall of Fame with all the greats.

“I’m looking forward to that,” he says. “I see this week as just a blur.”

Together, they go to the event, and they try to relive every moment the night offers, commit it all to memory. The blur pauses for one second when he puts on the gold jacket just before he gives his speech. That’s when it becomes real.

“It is like seeing your best friend get what you always knew that he deserves,” Senia says.

He is wearing the NFL tie, of course, because he’s a pro. One of his best friends Adrian Lunsford, who has been playing football with Will since they were both in the fifth grade, presents him. And then he stands up on the podium, behind the lectern, and he gives, well, a professional speech.

“It takes more than yourself,” he says. “It takes a village of people. With me, it was truly a village because no one gets to the top by themselves. Someone had to push, pull and prod me to the next level, help me walk through the tough steps.”

He does get in a quick jab about Gibbs (“He initially never wanted to draft me”) before crediting Gibbs for teaching him how to be an NFL lineman. He passes along all the credit to his teammates and coaches. “This honor is for you because without you, there’s nothing,” he says. “You guys were my rock. You’re the guys I went to war with every day. And I loved every minute of it.”

* * *

A Will Shields story: In the last month of the 2000 season, with absolutely nothing at stake, Will Shields played left tackle for the only time in his professional career. He was forced to, because the Chiefs had run out of options. They had lost five games in a row, they were out of the playoff chase, they were beat up and despondent. Someone had to play left tackle and everybody else was hurt. Will Shields had to be the guy.

I think of that day as we sit together in Canton and talk about what it all means. Shields is not much for individual accomplishments, of course. “I did not grow up dreaming of being in the Hall of Fame,” he says. “This all just sort of happened.”

I think about that day as he gives his touching and modest speech. On that dreary day in Kansas City back 15 years ago, Will Shields played left tackle and played like a superstar. He didn’t miss a block. The line didn’t allow a sack. He opened up holes for Chiefs running backs. The Chiefs won the game. The win didn’t matter at all. And it mattered completely.

After the game, I went to go talk to Will. He made it clear, in his own inimitable way, that he did not have anything to say. And, for the first time, I understood him a little better. What was there to say? He said everything on the field. All of the preparation, all the analysis, all of the workouts, all of the football dreams, all of the practice, all of the pain, all of the dreams, all of the rage, all of the discipline of his father, all of the love of his family – it was there for everyone to see. You just had to look.

Saturday night, in Canton, Will Shields said “I’m standing here being honored because of you. So when the opportunity presents itself in your life, choose to be a difference-maker in a village.”

And I understand him again and why he wasn’t looking forward to the speech. Words are just words, you know. Will Shields was a difference-maker. He lived it.

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    Once more, with feeling

    By Nov 22, 2016, 6:45 PM EST

    NEW YORK — Again and again, over and over, they ask him how he FEELS. Well, this is the question to ask, isn’t it? The bus crawls through New York traffic and takes Jimmie Johnson from office building to office building. People wait inside. Kelly Live waits. Charlie Rose waits. USA Today … Mad Dog Radio … NFL Radio … TMZ. They wait for him on top of the Empire State Building. They wait for him outside the Time Life Building.

    How does it FEEL, Jimmie?

    How does it FEEL to come from nowhere to win your seventh NASCAR Sprint Cup championship, Jimmie? How does it FEEL to tie the two enduring legends of your sport, “The King,” Richard Petty and “The Intimidator,” Dale Earnhardt? How does it FEEL to be the best at what you do, to be inside a race car, rushing at the speed of chaos with 39 maniacs around you barely holding on? No, really, break it down for our audience, how does it feel to be you, Jimmie Johnson, championship race-car driver, part-time triathlete, millionaire philanthropist like Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark, loving husband, adoring father, everybody’s best friend and somehow, still, the nicest guy?

    How does it FEEL, Jimmie?

    “Insane,” he says. “It feels insane.”

    “Awesome,” he says. “It feels awesome.”

    “Wonderful,” he says.

    “Surreal,” he says.

    “Incredible,” he says.

    “I don’t know that I have the words,” he says.

    We’ve known each other a long time, Jimmie and I. We’ve talked about a lot of things through the years, about family and sharks, about food and dreams, faith and football, about kids and ice cream and how hard it is to not care when people boo.

    “Let me ask you something,” I say as the day crawls on, and he has been asked the question two or three dozen times, and his eyes begin to close because he’s worn out. “All these people keep asking you how you feel.”

    “Yeah,” he says. “Part of the job.”

    “I know,” I tell him. “But if you keep talking about how it feels, how do you keep anything for yourself?”

    He smiles at that and shrugs and looks out the window of the bus.

    * * *

    There is a giant hill near the small house where Johnson grew up. People tend to know he grew up around San Diego and so they might think about the sun and the beach, colorful sailboats and yachts. He gives off the impression of royalty. But that’s not the San Diego where he grew up. His town was called El Cajon. There are no yachts in El Cajon. His father operated heavy machinery. His mother drove a school bus. They made do. Jimmie would escape down that hill on his bicycle.

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    That hill — El Cajon mountain — is a road that seems to go straight down. Even in a car, it is a bit daunting. And for the young Jimmie Johnson it held all the secrets worth knowing. He would rush too fast down that hill, then faster, then faster still, until his parents would tell him to chill, and his friends would nervously call him crazy. Then he went faster again. At that speed, he found that he could feel everything. Fear. Breathlessness. Joy. Hope. Love. Pain. Oh, sure, there was always some pain. There was always another crash. Jimmie Johnson was the kid who showed up for just about every class photo wearing a cast or leaning on crutches.

    Well, he couldn’t help it. He needed that speed. He needed to race. There was something about being on the edge — barely in control and barely out of control — that called to him. He would do ANYTHING for that feeling because being on that edge was the thing that made him feel most alive. As the years went on, he realized that to get that edge, he needed to make connections. So he made connections. He realized that to get to that edge he needed to know people. So he met people — the Herzogs, the Chevy people, Jeff Gordon, Rick Hendrick, the people who could help him get where he so needed to go.

    He is just one of those people who cannot leave his fears alone. He needed to explore the fears, dance around them, poke at them if he can. It’s still true. Even after he made his name as a race-car driver and could do more or less anything he wanted, he still spent a vacation diving into the water so he could be thisclose to sharks. Why would a sane person do that?

    “Because I’m absolutely terrified of sharks,” he says, as if that explains it.

    * * *

    Richard Petty. Dale Earnhardt. Jimmie Johnson. It does boggle Johnson’s mind that he’s now in that company, officially and inarguably, one of NASCAR’s holy trinity to win seven championships. People can argue who is, in fact, the greatest of all time — and there will be those who believe it isn’t ANY of the three but instead is an Allison or a Gordon or a Richmond or someone like that. Johnson doesn’t care. He’s so happy to be in the discussion.

    Johnson never did race against Petty or Earnhardt, though he raced plenty against their sons. He did meet the legends. Well, he has met Richard Petty quite a few times, but he doesn’t really have any good stories about it. “What can you say about him that hasn’t been said a million times?” Johnson says. “He’s the King. He treats everyone with respect. He’s our greatest champion. He’s always been very nice to me, but he’s nice to everyone, you know? I don’t really know that I have more to add than that.”

    Johnson does have good stories, though, about the two times he met Dale Earnhardt.

    As part of Johnson’s effort to know people, he became friends with Ron Hornaday Jr., a four-time World Truck Series Champion, and a friend of Earnhardt’s. And one day, Hornaday sees Johnson and says, “Hey, you want to meet Earnhardt?” And of course Johnson says yes because Earnhardt was a legend by then. “People my age,” he says, “there was no one on earth cooler than Dale Earnhardt.”

    They walk in together, and Hornaday introduces Johnson. Earnhardt sizes up the kid; Johnson was 21 years old then. And then Earnhadt reaches for a little box and gives it to Johnson. “Here,” he says with no warning or explanation. Inside is a little pocket knife with Dale Earnhardt’s name on it. Johnson is overwhelmed.

    “OK,” Earnhardt says. “So what did you get me?”

    Johnson kind of stumbles around. “Um,” he says, “I didn’t know …”

    Earnhardt growls, “You know it’s YEARS of bad luck if you give somebody a knife and then don’t get a gift in return.”

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    Johnson begins to turn red, “I mean …”

    Earnhardt goes on: “I don’t need your bad luck. I still haven’t won Daytona. I give you a knife and you don’t have anything for me, and now you’re telling me I have to walk around with your bad luck …”

    Johnson panics. He rushes outside and, using all the ingenuity he could muster up, gets a penny. He goes in and gives it to Earnhardt saying, “It’s a heads-up penny for good luck.”

    Earnhardt doesn’t say a word.

    “You know,” Johnson says now, almost 20 years later, “I wonder if he was messing with me.”

    * * *

    Did you see Johnson going crazy?  In the minutes after Johnson won that race at Homestead on Nov. 20, the one that clinched the seventh championship, he lost his mind. He danced. He jumped around. He hugged everyone and everything in his path. He screamed — screamed so loud and with such force that even days later he did not have his voice back.  He had won six championships before this one, and he celebrated those heartily, too. But this was different. This was unchained. This was Spinal Tap’s eleven.

    “I don’t even know who that guy was,” Johnson says as he looks at footage of himself going bananas.

    Shock, of course, had something to do with it. Johnson went into Sunday’s race needing to finish ahead of three drivers — Carl Edwards, Joey Logano and Kyle Busch — to win the seventh championship. And all race long, he could not beat any of the three. They all had better cars. They all had better track position. Johnson’s crew chief, Chad Knaus, had tinkered and gambled and even tried making a few rather desperate changes, but none of it mattered. Johnson just didn’t have enough car. Those three guys pulled away, and Johnson was left sitting in his car thinking of ways to be gracious when the inevitable loss happened. “I knew I wasn’t going to win,” he says. “I accepted it.”

    (All the while, his wife, Chandra, was a mess. Chandra is famous around the track for her relatively serene approach to watching Jimmie race. On Sunday, she admitted, she was in the fetal position).

    And then in the final 10 laps of the race, suddenly, a whole series of wacky things happened. Carl Edwards was in command of the championship when the caution flag came out. Poor Carl Edwards. He’s had a glorious NASCAR career, winning 28 races and more than $80 million in prize money, but something has always blocked him from being THE GUY. There was the time he tied Tony Stewart and lost the tiebreaker. There was the year he won nine races, including the last one, but fell short on points. And then there was this one, the time when he had the championship in his hand but a caution flag came out with 10 laps to go and it all went to hell.

    Edwards restarted on the front row, and he had Joey Logano behind him. Jimmie Johnson was behind Logano. And for the first time all day, Johnson thought: “Well, hey, maybe there’s a chance.”

    Logano, as is his style, made a bold move inside to try and beat Edwards on the restart — nobody in NASCAR restarts quite as aggressively and forcefully as Logano. He went so far inside that his car rolled over the painted area near the interior wall. And it was a winning move — his move would trap Edwards between cars, and there’s no escaping that spot. Edwards knew it, knew his race was over if he let Logano by, and so, in a desperate effort to block Logano, he swerved left. “I was a bit optimistic,” Edwards said ruefully afterward. He bumped Logano, and then lost control, leading to a fiery wreck that ended Edwards’ hopes and shut the race down for 30 minutes.

    “As soon as I got by that wreck,” Johnson said, “I thought, ‘Wait a minute. What’s happening here? I might actually win this.'”

    Well, that was certainly the thought in the Johnson camp, where Knaus was pumping his fist and Chandra was losing her mind and so on. During that 30-minute, red-flag delay, Johnson’s crew, his fans, and the many people around NASCAR hoping to see a bit of history were going out of their minds. It was going to happen! Jimmie Johnson! Seven championships! Impossible!

    And, inside the car, Johnson fell asleep

    “I guess I was calm,” he says, and even now he’s surprised.

    There was one more break to come Johnson’s way — he expected to be lined up in the third position, which would have been him on the inside lane with his championship competitor Kyle Busch on the outside. If there was one thing that was clear all day in Miami it was this: You did NOT want to be in the inside lane. That was the lane where Carl Edwards AND Joey Logano saw their dreams end. “You just can’t hold your speed on the inside at Miami,” Johnson says.

    But, NASCAR determined that Busch, not Johnson, should be in the third spot. Johnson broke free from Busch on the restart and took the lead.

    * * *

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    There’s an irony about NASCAR: It is the ultimate thrill ride — 200 mph on sheet metal and horsepower and all that’s left of your tires — but you don’t get to NASCAR and you don’t win championships through daredevil feats. You get to NASCAR through great racing, yes, but also by building relationships, by impressing sponsors, by pitching the Lowe’s-Budweiser-M&M’s-FedEx-Napa Parts-Chevrolet-Toyota-Ford car and by working within a team. You win championships by driving like the devil when your car is loose and seems to be on a sheet of black ice, yes, but also by understanding what you don’t know and trusting your crew to handle things. You win championships by controlling your car, but also by relinquishing control. It’s the shakiest of balances.

    And balance is what Johnson does better than anyone in the sport.

    So when everyone asks Johnson how he feels after the seventh championship, well, he tries his best, he uses the balanced words that come closest, but really, in a private moment, he will tell you: He doesn’t really know HOW he feels. It’s all too much to take in.

    “All my life,” he says, “I just wanted to race cars. It was never about the numbers. I didn’t want to win seven championships. I didn’t really want to win one championship. I mean, yeah, I wanted to win, but what I really wanted was to drive a race car.”

    Before this race, he said the thing he wanted was to feel like he did when he was a kid, to strip away all the money and all the fame and all the past glory and just feel that thing he used to stay up all night dreaming about, that thing that pushed him to go down El Cajon Mountain just a little bit faster than felt right.

    Did he?

    “When people ask me how I feel,” he says, “I tell them best I can. I want people to share in this feeling i have. … But I don’t tell them everything.”

    * * *

    The second time Johnson met Dale Earnhardt, well, it’s a much shorter story. Johnson was hanging around with some buddies at Earnhardt’s garage when they all saw The Intimidator’s car roll slowly by with its windows pulled up. Suddenly the car stopped, and it backed up, and the window came down.

    “Hey,” Earnhardt said to Johnson. “You work for me?”

    “No sir.”

    “Then get the hell out of here. I don’t need no lawsuits.”

    And the window rolled back up and Dale Earnhardt drove away.

    At the end of that magical race at Homestead, there was one final restart, and after that Johnson heard “Clear” from his spotter, meaning the race and that seventh championship was his. Then came the disbelief and the crazy dancing and screaming and joy and hugs from his wife and children and the greatest compliment a driver could ever get.

    “Jimmie,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. would say to his friend as he pulled Johnson close, “Dad would think you’re such a badass.”

    The fourth wheel

    By Nov 18, 2016, 12:51 PM EST

    MIAMI — Carl Edwards has to know that he’s sort of the odd duck in this year’s Chase. Here, you have Kyle Busch, defending champion, force of nature, superstar. There, you have Jimmie Johnson, six-time champion, legend of the sport.  And third, completing the triangle, you have Joey Logano, 26 years old, phenom trying to insert himself into the story, everybody’s favorite young villain, the future of NASCAR.

    And here is Carl Edwards, 37 years old, a former dirt-track driver who ground out 28 victories in an excellent 13-year career but has never quite crashed through, never won a championship, never quite broken out of the pack of those excellent and professional drivers who make up the heart of NASCAR. People who know him probably know him as the guy who does a backflip when he wins. That’s fun. But it isn’t exactly what he wants.

    When you look at a list of the drivers who won the most races without winning a championship, you see this:

    1. Junior Johnson, 50 wins

    2. Mark Martin, 40 wins

    3. Fireball Roberts, 33 wins

    4. Denny Hamlin, 29 wins

    5. Carl Edwards, 28 wins

    Edwards knows this, knows it better than anyone. He knows there’s a difference in how people look at you when you’ve won a championship — knows there might even be a difference in how you look at yourself.

    Watch: NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship (Sunday at 1:30 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and NBC Sports App)

    “Winning a championship,” he says, “it just means that, you know, you go to bed Sunday night and know, hey, you did it. You beat the best in the world. And we’re the champions … at least until they start racing again. I guess that’s what it comes down to. That’s about the longest a win can last in this sport.”

    Edwards has had his share of championship heartbreak, beginning with his loss to Tony Stewart in 2011. The two were actually tied in points after an epic duel at Homestead, but the championship went to Stewart because he won more races than Edwards that year. NBCSN has shown that race this week, and Edwards admitted that he watched maybe 10 minutes of it. After that, he was so motivated he was ready to jump in a race car immediately.

    There were other close calls, but now, he’s back, and he will not pretend that it’s just another week. When someone asked all four drivers if they were going to try and treat this week differently from other weeks, the other three guys said, “No.” They talked about how you have to treat this race like any other, prepare the same way. Edwards had a different answer.

    “For me,” Edwards said, “I’m going to be honest, this week does feel different. I mean, yes, we do have to go do the same job, like these guys said. But for me, each moment, I almost have to pinch myself, like, ‘Hey, this is really it, we’re getting to do this.’ So this is more excitement for me personally.”

    “Would winning a championship change your self-perception?”

    “Well, yeah, it would be great. I think it would be great … you can print that. It would be great for a different reason for me at this point in my career, though. I’m starting to just realize how difficult this is.

    “As far as self-perception, probably like most race car drivers, I kind of have an ego problem already. So that could put me over the edge, honestly.”

    Edwards’ advantage could be the track. He has won the pole twice at Homestead and has won the race twice, finishing top five five times in his 12 starts. He just won at Texas, which is a similar track that uses a similar tire setup. “There’s not a better race track,” he says. “Statistically, this is as good as it gets for me.”

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    And his dirt-track background sets him up well too. The toughest part of competing in a winner-take-all race is that you have to find a way to win no matter what gets thrown your way. In other races throughout the season, you just do the best you can with what fate deals you. There is always more than one winner in a regular season NASCAR race. There’s the driver that takes the checkered flag, but there are also those who had to overcome numerous problems, mechanical issues, tire trouble, poor pit stops, whatever, and somehow finished seventh or 10th or something like that. Every week, you will hear drivers and crew chiefs say happily, “We got the most out of our car today.”

    But for the four drivers left in the Chase, that’s not really an option on Sunday. It’s all about winning.

    “Carl’s real good at driving through the limits and being able to compensate for something not being right the with the car,” his teammate and competitor Kyle Busch says. “He’s able to make more out of it. So that sets him up pretty well.”

    “I think that comes from his dirt background,” Johnson says. “He’s used to dealing with cars that just weren’t exactly right.”

    “Yeah, that’s nice for people to say,” Edwards himself says. “But this is NASCAR, you have the best drivers in the world, they’re ALL good at making the most of their car. The other three drivers in the Chase are incredible. I don’t really think I have an advantage in that. All of us are good at that.

    “I do feel like, yeah, I like the challenge. I feel like if they would spray the track down with water and said, ‘OK, everybody race,’ I would enjoy that struggle. … But I’ll enjoy this week no matter what. It’s fun. This is what I like.”

    One for the history books

    By Nov 18, 2016, 8:52 AM EST

    MIAMI — There is a funny thing about sports dreams. You know, the kind you have when you’re a little kid. You dream about hitting the game-winning home run. You dream about catching the game-winning touchdown pass, or swishing the game-winning basket, or scoring the game-winning goal, or making the putt that wins you the Masters.

    Few of us ever get to do it, of course. But that’s not the funny part.

    The funny part is that the people who DO get to do it, well, they find that it isn’t exactly like the dreams. Take Jimmie Johnson. He has won six NASCAR Sprint Cup Championships. Six. Only two men — Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt with seven — have any idea what that’s like. But to be realistic, even they don’t know EXACTLY what it is like because the sport has grown so much bigger, the money has grown so much bigger, the pressure has grown so much bigger. So many people are counting on you. So many people are rooting against you. Gigantic companies have many millions of dollars at stake.

    And so even though this is all Jimmie Johnson ever wanted — to be the best race car driver — those first five championships felt nothing at all like his childhood dreams. He didn’t even ENJOY them, not in the way we understand the word “enjoy.” Yes, he was very proud of what he and his team did. Yes, he thrilled in the racing, the speed, the challenge, the victories, the opportunities that came with being the best stock-car driver in the world. But it wasn’t fun, if that makes sense. It wasn’t that innocent joy that went along with all those childhood daydreams, that feeling of the world going in slow motion, that intoxicating blur of champagne and happiness and wonder. He would stay up at night, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how he could stay on top.

    In 2013, when Johnson was 38 years old and won his sixth championship, the feeling was closer to what he had hoped. By then, Johnson had let go of a lot of things, a lot of the insecurities. He had stopped worrying so much about pleasing everyone. But even that wasn’t EXACTLY what he had dreamed about.

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    “You’re like, ‘Wow, this is nutty, this is stressful, can I do it?'” Johnson says. “You have all of these things weighing you down. When I won those first few championships, it wasn’t fun AT ALL. There was always more to do, you know? In ’13, it definitely felt different. I felt different. That was the most fun I’ve ever had racing for a championship by far.

    “Still, some days, you wish you could feel that thing you wanted as a kid, you know, that place you see in the movies or hear about in stories, and it is surreal, and the world stops and time stops, and it is perfect.”

    So that’s what this time is about. Johnson is 41 years old. He’s a legend of the sport. He has won six championships and 79 races and more than $150 million in prize money. He has won multiple races every year since he was a rookie. The legacy, if such a thing matters, is secure.

    And so, this race is for him.

    “I feel different going into this championship than I have ever felt before, there’s absolutely no doubt about that,” Johnson says. “As weird as it may sound, I’m more comfortable in my own skin than I’ve ever been. And that’s a major player. I have nothing to prove to anyone, and I don’t care what other people think. I really don’t. I’m racing this weekend for me and my family and my team. I don’t have any outside baggage that’s on me. That was other years. There was plenty of that stuff. None of that matters to me anymore.”

    He endured an odd year. It began like most Jimmie Johnson years do — he won in Atlanta in the second race of the year and followed that up three weeks later with a win at Fontana. And then he and his team went into a bit of slump. In a 15-race span, he finished in the top five four times while finishing 20th or worse six times. He and his crew chief Chad Knaus struggled week to week. There was the talk — which has grown louder the last couple of years — that Johnson was close to the end. “I definitely missed driving up front,” Johnson says.

    Watch: NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship (Sunday at 1:30 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and NBC Sports App)

    Then came the Chase and it has been absolutely perfect. He breezed into the second round, then won the first race, Charlotte, to automatically move into the third round. He promptly won the first race of the third round, in Martinsville, to qualify for Sunday’s final four. Johnson’s team has had two stress-free weeks to prepare the car for this final race, and while nobody knows if that will make a difference, well, it can’t hurt.

    And Johnson is just enjoying it. “I’m excited,” he says. “And I’m fresh. I don’t know if it will change as we get closer to the race, if the nerves will come. But I don’t think it will.”

    He is well aware, of course, that winning this title would tie him with Earnhardt and Petty for most championships — so aware of it that ever since he won the race in Charlotte he has been wearing a helmet with Petty and Earnhardt’s photos on it and the words “Drive for Seven.” He says that if he could tie those two legends of the sport, it would mean the world to him because it would connect him to history.

    But, again, he promises not to let that inflate into pressure.

    “I never race for stats,” he says. “I’ve never raced for stats, for fame, for money. I’ve just always loved racing. I feel like I’m more in touch with that, in tune with that, than I’ve ever been in my career.

    “I think about those dreams I had as a kid, dreams all of us have in our own way I suppose. I guess I want that moment. I’ve done this for a long time. And I’d love to have that moment.”

    Promises, promises

    By Nov 17, 2016, 11:02 PM EST

    MIAMI — Two years ago, Joey Logano showed up for his shot at destiny … and he was scared out of his mind. He doesn’t like to say it that way. He would prefer to just say, “I was nervous. Because I didn’t know what was happening. And I think that’s where nerves are going to come from.”

    He was just 24 years old then and he was trying to join Jeff Gordon and Bill Rexford as the only two drivers to win a championship before turning 25 years old. But it was different for Logano. He’d been preordained to be NASCAR’s next superstar ever since he was a teenager. “Sliced bread,” they called him — as in “best thing since …” — and while he sort of got a kick out of the nickname and the expectations when he was a kid, those things soon felt like an anchor tied to his waist.

    “Sliced bread,” people would mutter savagely every time he finished out of the top five.

    “Sliced bread,” people would taunt him because he won just three races in his first five full seasons.

    “Sliced bread,” other drivers would mock when they felt like Logano pushed his aggressiveness too far.

    Then in 2014, it finally came together for Logano. He won five times. He came to Homestead with a real chance to win the championship … only he readily admits that his head just wasn’t in the right place. “I couldn’t settle my mind down,” he says. “I was thinking about what could happen … or what’s going to happen … what’s the week going to look like … what’s the feeling on Sunday going to be … what is it going to feel like like getting in the car … do I have what it takes?”

    Here Logano smiles. He’s famous for that smile.

    Watch: NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship (Sunday at 1:30 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and NBC Sports App)

    “I think that’s the big one. ‘Do I have what it takes?’ I didn’t know then. I know now.”

    “What do you know?” 

    “I know the challenge ahead. I’m prepared for that. I’m ready for that, ready for the pressure. I’m more than ready, I’m excited about it. I’m genuinely pumped. It’s like a complete 180 from last time I was here.”

    There are times when it feels like Logano has been racing forever — and he HAS been racing full time since 2009 — but he’s still just 26 years old. He’s five years younger than Jimmie Johnson was when he won the first of his so-far six championships, three years younger than Dale Earnhardt when he won his first of seven. And he’s five years younger than any of the other drivers in the Chase this year.

    And it’s the combination of youth and experience that makes him unique … and dangerous. NASCAR people will tell you: Young drivers go FAST. The great Junior Johnson used to say, “They don’t know no better — they haven’t hit the wall yet.” So younger drivers push closer to the edge than might be prudent out of youthful exuberance and daring. That makes them go extremely fast, yes, but then they tend to burn out (or spin out or get spun out).

    Logano has that speed. But he has more or less stopped burning out.

    “When you’re flirting with the edge, you’re going to step over it from time to time,” Jimmie Johnson says. “And he has. I think he’s figured out how to inch his way up to the edge instead of flying over it like he did three or four years ago.”

    “For me,” Carl Edwards says, “a switch has gone off the last couple of years for Joey. He’s just so fast everywhere. I have a feeling he’s going to be VERY fast on Sunday. He’s hungry. He wants this very badly. You could argue that he doesn’t have a lot of experience or whatever but I’ve been around long enough. I’ve watched how he’s been approaching this. I think he’s got a ton of confidence.”

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    The other three drivers talk a lot about handling whatever adversity comes this week, being patient, always, in the immortal words of NASA legend Gene Kranz, “Working the problem.” Logano talks about these things too, but more he talks about being aggressive … and being aggressive … and when that doesn’t work, to keep being aggressive.

    “Attack all day,” Logano says of the gameplan. “That’s it. It’s the way our team is. It has been for the last three years or whatever. That’s what we found to be successful for us. Race aggressively. Attack every minute. I start the race and say, ‘I’m here to win,’ and I have that ‘I will not get beat’ attitude throughout the race. Whether that’s good or bad, well, it’s different for other people. Probably it’s a lot different. But it works for us.”

    And when you ask him how he will deal with the frustration that might come with a poor pit stop or a car that won’t quite adjust to conditions or the ever-changing conditions of the track, he smiles again.

    “Frustration is OK,” he says. “It’s OK as long as it’s channeled in the right way. But there’s never that feeling of ‘We’re just not going to win today. It’s just not our day. We suck.’ There’s never that feeling. Because I know we don’t suck. I know I’m a very good race car driver. I know I have a very good race team. And I know we can handle this.”

    The Magic Man

    By Nov 17, 2016, 10:07 PM EST

    MIAMI — The wonderful thing about the press conference for the NASCAR Championship Four — just three days before the big race — is that you have all four of the contending drivers sitting on the stage side by side. And because they are sitting next to each other, you can get just a small feel for how they feel about each other and their chances and everything else coming into the winner-take-all final race.

    Joey Logano, for instance, is totally pumped up, super happy. Why not? He won last week to become one of the four drivers to have a chance to win a championship Sunday. This is the dream, man.

    Jimmie Johnson seems calm, beyond calm, like he’s done this whole thing a million times before, which is pretty close to true.

    Carl Edwards looks a bit dazed, but in the best of ways. He’s 37 years old now and he has won 28 races and more than $80 million, but he has never won a Sprint Cup Championship. He looks like a guy in a dream.

    And then there’s Kyle Busch. He looks, um, lethargic.

    “Do you guys like each other?” someone asks the group.

    “Kyle,” Logano says, “we’ll let you answer that.”

    Watch: NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship (Sunday at 1:30 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and NBC Sports App)

    Busch looks out with a bit of a bewildered expression, as if someone has just woken him up from a nap. “I am exhausted,” he would say later. And when asked why, he would say, “I am always exhausted.”

    “Do you like each other?” was the question to the group.

    “Right now, yes,” Busch says. “In about 25 seconds, no.”

    Kyle Busch has the aura now. For so many years, he was the guy with unlimited potential, the impossibly talented driver who won a lot of races but always should have won more. Busch himself bought into the hype. He lashed out. He got into numerous dust-ups. Fans loathed him. He beat himself up continuously. In the words of his team owner Joe Gibbs: “He always felt like he was letting himself and his team down, like he wasn’t living up to his great talent.”

    Last year, it all changed. What a year that was. Busch got into a wreck at Daytona that threatened to end his entire season — for a brief time it seemed like his career might be in danger. Even once the doctors got a handle on his condition, Busch was supposed to be out for a minimum six months. Three months later he was standing — wobbly but standing — in the hospital room when his wife Samantha gave birth to their son Brexton.

    Then he came back to the track … and he was essentially unbeatable. In a beautiful five-week span, he won at Sonoma, at Kentucky, at Loudon and finally at the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis — his first major victory. He won so much that he easily qualified for the Chase even though he’d missed 11 races. Then he made it to the final four, and he ran away to victory at Homestead for his first championship. In the last few laps, he was singing the theme song for “Vocabularry” — his infant son’s favorite TV show.

    A magical year like that, yeah, it changes a person.

    “No,” he says now, “it doesn’t feel a whole lot different.”

    A magical year like that, um, it sort of changes a person?

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    “Well, look, it hasn’t been terribly different on the racing side,” Busch says. “Personally, with Brexton at home and stuff like that, that’s different. Having him come to all the races, that’s pretty fun. We certainly enjoy the time that we have on the road. But, you know, I’m just me.”

    So, OK, maybe a magical year like that doesn’t change a person — but don’t tell the other drivers that. They see a different Kyle Busch. There was always a saying in the garages about Kyle Busch during those years when he could not quite put everything together: If he ever wins a championship, watch out.

    Now that he’s won one, yes, watch out.

    “He just has so much confidence now, you can see it,” Johnson says. “I mean, he was always a confident guy, but it’s different, I think. Now, he’s a champion. Now, he KNOWS.”

    That is exactly the thing that is apparent as Kyle Busch sits off to the side during the press conference — it’s like he’s separate from the other three. He knows. He’s the defending champion. He’s the closest thing this Chase has to a favorite. He’s the guy in the best position to take over this sport, to be the new Dale Earnhardt, the new Bobby Allison, the new Richard Petty. A year ago, after he won his championship, he boldly said he’d like to win 10 in a row. When people laughed, he made it clear that he wasn’t joking.

    “It’s not about what we did last year,” he says. “We’ve already got that one. It’s in the bag. This is about going out there THIS one. It’s one race. It doesn’t matter what the situation is this week, doesn’t matter what comes your way, you have to figure out a way to win.”

    That, more than anything, might be what makes Kyle Busch the favorite. Right now, there is no stock-car driver anywhere who can make more out of less than Kyle Busch. Just last week in Phoenix, he had a tepid car that was running around 15th for most of the race. Through sheer relentlessness, a few adjustments on the car and a bit of driving brilliance — especially on restarts (Busch is a wonder on restarts) — they somehow finished second and could have won.

    “Oh, Kyle can make some magic,” Johnson says. “And knowing him, I’ll bet he will on Sunday.”

    No more fun and games

    By Nov 17, 2016, 10:55 AM EST

    Cam Newton, at his best, is a magical player. He does things that blow minds. He throws 30-yard darts that slip by defensive backs before they can react. He avoids sacks not so much by eluding them as by simply standing up through them, a brick house in the Big Bad Wolf’s wind. Newton takes off running and in the open field he is both halfback and fullback, able at times to split defenders in two the way Gale Sayers could, able at other times to blast through a defender, not unlike the way Neo blasts through Agent Smith at the end of “The Matrix.”

    This is Newton at his height, when the conditions are right, when his team is playing great and the opponent is in retreat and, as the Magic 8-Ball says, “All signs point to yes.”

    This was Newton last year for a 15-1 Panthers team that went to the Super Bowl.

    Something has changed this year, of course. That part is obvious. It isn’t that Newton is playing badly. His numbers are down, yes, and the Panthers are 3-6 and in last place. But he’s still among the top five or 10 quarterbacks out there. And there have been a few familiar moments. He threw for four touchdown passes against San Francisco. He has had a couple of dazzling runs. He has put his team in position to win for the most part, including last week against Kansas City. It isn’t like Newton suddenly forgot how to play football … he’s still Cam Newton.

    But something has obviously changed.

    What? There are a few clear possibilities. The Panthers’ defense was otherworldly last year, forcing turnover after turnover, setting up Newton and his offense with golden opportunities time and again. That has more or less stopped this year. The Panthers are starting inside their own 20-yard line more often. This has affected the Panthers’ offense generally and Newton specifically. He’s thrown only 10 touchdown passes this year. All the numbers are down.

    On offense, the line has been beat-up and inconsistent, and that has knocked Newton off his game. He has thrown off his back foot more often, and that usually leads to bad things. It did last week when the Panthers seemed about ready to put away Kansas City — a retreating Newton threw a pick-six that put Kansas City back in a game that should have been over. Newton has dealt with injuries, too — he missed the game against Tampa Bay, and he wasn’t himself in others.

    Watch: Saints vs. Panthers on Thursday Night Football (7:30 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and NBC Sports app)

    And, perhaps most of all, teams have been taking their free shots at him at every turn. Newton is 6-foot-5, 245 pounds and a great runner, so teams obviously have to tackle him hard. But there’s no question opponents have taken this to an extreme this season. They have hit Newton late a few times, stolen some shots to the head, unloaded some knockout blows. And, for the most part, there have been no penalties to accompany the hits, possibly BECAUSE Newton is so big and powerful.

    This has driven Newton to distraction. Newton seems to believe the whole world is ganging up on him. A couple of weeks ago, he flatly said that the late hits are “really taking the fun out of the game for me. At times I don’t even feel safe.”

    Newton has a beef. But more to the point here, all of this leads to this rather simple theory that I have about Cam Newton.

    He needs to be having fun to play his best football.

    And this year, he’s just not having any fun.

    Great athletes tend to feed off different motivations. Some want to be loved. Some seem to get a huge kick out of being despised. Some are motivated by fear, others by anger, still others by fame and fortune. Tom Brady, for instance, STILL seems to motivate himself by disrespect (you might have heard that he was selected in the sixth round of the NFL draft) even though it has been years since anybody disrespected him (Roger Goodell aside). Meanwhile, a player like Carolina’s impeccable linebacker Luke Kuechly seems to motivate himself through the daily challenge of figuring out how to break up an offense — it is like a puzzle for him.

    Newton apparently grazes off joy. He wears the hats. He does the dances. He gives away the footballs. The bigger the lead, the more fun he has, the better he plays. The louder the crowd, the more fun he has, the higher he soars. This is part of what makes Newton such a joy; through it all, he PLAYS football the way kids PLAY football. It’s a game. And it’s so much fun when everything is working and everyone has come together.

    This is something people around the Carolina team have noticed for years. There have been times that people inside the organization have wondered if Newton could be serious enough to become a great NFL quarterback. Soon enough they realized that it was the wrong question, realized that being serious doesn’t suit him or his play. You probably noticed how serious Newton looked in the Super Bowl last year. That didn’t turn out well.

    Marty Schottenheimer is one of the many coaches who noted that you can’t have fun in the NFL if you lose. The Panthers are coming off one of their worst losses in recent franchise history, a complete giveaway to the Chiefs. Their playoff situation looks pretty dire — Carolina might have to win out. The key will be getting Newton to start having fun again.

    The remarkable rise of Andy Murray

    By Nov 8, 2016, 5:09 PM EST

    For years, there was this fun argument going on about Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. The argument assumed that both men are the best who ever played golf and tennis (an open debate, obviously). And it led to one question: Who is better at their sport?

    The argument never really went anywhere because for every point (golf requires beating the WHOLE field rather than one opponent at a time), there was a counterpoint (one mediocre/bad day in golf does not sink a golfer’s chances, but it can end a tennis player’s tournament).

    For every factor that points to the difficulty of golf (it is so mentally challenging that even the great golfers will miss cuts with some regularity — Phil Mickelson missed 11 in his career) there is another that points to the difficulty of tennis (it is so physically grueling that many of the greatest players — John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, Martina Hingis, Justine Henin, Mats Wilander, on and on — won their last Grand Slam singles title by the time they turned 25 years old).

    Anyway, it was fun to talk about, even if it never really led anywhere. But there is something that does seem to be emerging about the wonderful dominance of Woods and Federer. You might call the two effects “dishearten” and “hearten.”

    All of this, eventually, will take us to Andy Murray. Hopefully.

    Tiger Woods was such a force in golf that he disheartened his opponents. He broke their spirit. They could not beat him, not when he was on his game, not when he was slightly off his game and, quite often, not even when he was very much off his game. There’s an old Jack Nicklaus line that is even more true for Woods: He knew he would beat you, you knew he would beat you, and he knew that you knew he would beat you.

    FIfty-eight times, Woods was either in the lead or tied for the lead going into the final round. He won 54 of them. He won the first 14 major tournaments he led after 54 holes.

    And how did this uncommon mastery of a sport that is supposed to defy mastery affect other golfers? It crushed them. Sure, there were supremely talented golfers in Woods’ time, several who are in the World Golf Hall of Fame. But let’s put it this way — from the time when Woods broke onto the scene and breezed to the 1997 Masters title to when he won the U.S. Open on one leg, there were 46 major championships.

    Tiger Woods won 14 of them, as mentioned.

    The other 32 majors? Well, 25 different golfers won those 32 majors. Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson won three. Mark O’Meara, Retief Goosen and Ernie Els won two each. Those five terrific players — four already in the Hall of Fame with only Goosen waiting — won fewer majors than Woods COMBINED. And the other 20 majors were won by 20 different golfers. It’s a clear pattern: Everyone would show up at the majors with the hope that Woods was way off his game. Then, and only then, did they have a chance.

    His magnificence was unassailable. It was meant to be enjoyed and feared but not challenged. The best golfers on earth not named Tiger Woods had to console themselves with the huge sums of money that Tiger brought into the sport and the hope that maybe someday he would stop winning everything and leave some tournaments for everyone else.

    So, yes, Tiger Woods was disheartening.

    Roger Federer, somehow, was the opposite. He was every bit as dominant as Woods — the numbers are even more striking. From 2003, when Federer won his first Wimbledon to 2010 when he took the Australian Open, there were 27 Grand Slam tournaments. Federer won 16 of them, more than half, and reached the final in another six. The only other tennis players to win Grand Slams in Roger’s time: Rafael Nadal, who won six, and five others who managed one each.

    But it was different somehow. There was something magnanimous about Federer’s beautiful game, something that opened up possibilities in the minds of other tennis players. Golfers would see Tiger Woods hit miracle shots out of trouble and make every important putt he looked at and they would think: NO SHOT. But Federer would hit some implausible running forehand winner or spin a drop-volley with such touch that it would not even bounce, and the other tennis players would think: I WANT TO DO THAT!

    That begins with Nadal, of course. He seemed to be just the latest in a long line of Spanish and Latin American clay-court specialists — Sergi Brugera, Gustavo Kuerten, Gaston Gaudio, Albert Costa, Juan Carlos Ferrera — who would show up at the French Open to win and then disappear like top-spinning swallows of Capistrano.

    Nadal, though, was stirred to take his game to a higher place. He has spoken eloquently about how the inspiration of Federer took him there. Nadal has won all four major championships and 14 Grand Slam tournaments in all — he has his place now in the inner circle of all-time tennis greats. His rivalry with Federer might just be the greatest in tennis history. Nadal has controlled it for the most part with shots that kick up high and attack Fed’s backhand like wasps. Still, their tennis has lifted the sport.

    Novak Djokovic was next. He had both Federer AND Nadal to contend with, something that certainly could have left him entirely discouraged. At times, he did indeed seem discouraged. Djokovic does not have quite the grace or touch of Federer nor the ferocious power of Nadal. He found his own path — foot speed, instincts, hitting balls on the rise, imposing return of serve and sheer ambition. He has now won 12 Grand Slam titles, including the career Grand Slam. He has a winning record against both Federer and Nadal. He too has a place in tennis’ inner circle.

    All of which brings us to Andy Murray. He has been around a long time. It is tempting to think that Murray is younger than he is, but he was born in the same month as Djokovic (Murray is actually a week older). He is less than a year younger than Nadal. He played in his first Wimbledon in 2005. He has endured more or less the ENTIRE period of Roger and Rafa and Novak’s dominance.

    He did not just endure that dominance, he was repeatedly smacked down by their dominance. The first 10 times he reached at least a Grand Slam semifinal, he was knocked out by Nadal (four times), Federer (three times) or Djokovic (two times)*. If anyone had good reason to grudgingly accept that he was born at just the wrong time, it was Murray.

    *He was also beaten once in a semi by Andy Roddick, another slap in the face — he couldn’t even be the best ANDY on the court that day.

    And Murray seemed, well, to put it delicately, just the type of person who would grudgingly accept that he was born at just the wrong time. Murray in 2008, when he was 21 years old and had not yet won a single significant tournament (no offense to the Qatar Open) nor reached the final of a Grand Slam event, wrote an autobiography called “Hitting Back.” Nobody was entirely sure WHY he wrote an autobiography at that time, but he did indeed hit back — at British tennis, at the media members who doubted him (he was refusing to even talk to the BBC at the time) and at the unfair obstacles he seemed sure that everyone was putting in his way and his way alone. He came across as a very angry young man, though nobody was entirely sure why.

    Then, maybe the answer why was obvious. Federer was majestic then. Nadal was ascendant. Djokovic won the Australian Open that very year. There seemed to be no room in the tennis world for Andy Murray, and he seemed to know it.

    So what happened from there? The book kept getting updated as Murray began growing up. The paperback version of that book was called “Coming of Age.” And then the book title was updated and titled  “Seventy-Seven: My Road to Wimbledon Glory.” That happened in 2013, after Murray broke the 77-year British drought and won Wimbledon. By then, he was a different tennis player and a different man. He had won the Olympics in London. He won the U.S. Open that year. He had found himself.

    And I would argue that it was, once again, the inspiration of Federer, who inspired Nadal, who inspired Djokovic, who inspired Murray. Andy improved everything about his game. And he did it by building up every single part of his game. He doesn’t really do anything specifically better than the rest of the world. But you know those Sprint commercials where Sprint basically admits it’s not QUITE as good as Verizon, but it’s 99 percent as good for half the price?

    Murray doesn’t quite have Djokovic’s return of serve (no one in tennis history does) or his pure speed — but it’s probably 99 percent.

    Murray doesn’t quite have Nadal’s bullfighter tenacity — win or die with honor — but he’s probably at 99 percent.

    Murray doesn’t quite have Federer’s ability to hit the “gaga shot” that tilts an opponent’s head the same way shaking a pinball machine does — but he’s probably at 99 percent.

    In other words, at least as I see it, Murray created a game that is like an homage to those masters he has been trying to beat. He does a little bit of everything, and he brings along some of that youthful rage and intensity, and here he is: Murray is now the No. 1 player in the world.

    It is unclear if he will stay at No. 1 for very long. Djokovic seems worn down by his own extraordinary rise, but he has still made the final of nine of the last 11 Grand Sam tournaments, winning six of them. Djokovic also dominated the head-to-head matchups between them, winning 24 of 34 matches and eight of the 10 times they played in Grand Slams. It seems a pretty good bet that he will be back, and so this could be just a Murray blip, a fluke of timing.

    Or it could be more. Either way, for Murray to reach No. 1 after all these years is an extraordinary thing.

    When Tiger Woods hit the golf scene, you will remember there was a lot of talk about the generation of golfers he would give rise to, the young golfers who, seeing what he was doing, would find a way to take golf even higher. We might be seeing that with golfers like Rory McIlroy and Jason Day and Jordan Spieth, though it is too early to tell.

    Federer’s impact is clearer. He came into the sport during a lull, just as the Pete Sampras-Andre Agassi era was ending, and he played sublime and previously unimaginable tennis. And his tennis genius has helped create three of the greatest tennis players who ever lived. I’m sure he didn’t mean to do that. But, hey, who DOESN’T want to be Roger Federer?