Lane Johnson Can't Stop, Won't Stop Talking About The Patriots
By Matthew Geagan, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- Lane Johnson says he's over the "disrespect" the Patriots showed the Eagles leading up to Super Bowl LII.
But that doesn't mean he's done talking about it. If there's one thing the Philadelphia offensive lineman loves to do, it's talk about the Patriots. With the Eagles set to take on the Pats Thursday night in preseason game No. 2, Johnson is once again yapping about the team they beat for the city's first Super Bowl.
His main beef is that he believes Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick dismissed and talked trash to Eagles owner Jeffrey Luria and head coach Doug Pederson ahead of February's big game. In the months following that Super Bowl win, Johnson has called the Patriots a "fear-based organization" and criticized their players for acting like robots, though he has a much more colorful description.
"I just felt like we weren't even given a chance going into the game. I felt like we were disrespected, and we were by them," Johnson said Tuesday, courtesy of ESPN. "I made plenty of comments about why I said what I said. It's not like I was coming out of the blue just to talk. It's because I felt like I've been disrespected and the team's been disrespected. It's not like I'm coming out here running my mouth because I want to. No other teams really came out and ran their mouth.
"People can discredit it all they want. I think it's why I get so much recognition is because a lot of it is true and they don't want to accept it. At the end of the day, man, I'm over it," Johnson said. "... It's a totally different year."
For someone who is over it, he certainly likes to keep bringing it up. And thanks to this endless stream of Patriots bashing, Johnson is ready for a hostile environment when he takes the field at Gillette Stadium Thursday night.
"Oh yeah. I hope so. I hope they raise hell," Johnson said of Patriots fans. "They can cuss me, they can say whatever they want. At the end of the day, I'm not blocking them, I'm blocking guys on the edge, so it really doesn't matter what they say.
"I know that I'm not going to be well-liked, this team is not going to be well-liked going there, so it's going to basically bring out our best," he added.
Hey, whatever it takes to get fired up for a preseason game.
