Chad Johnson Preparing For CFL Comeback

It’s been more than two years since former NFL wide receiver Chad Johnson last saw the field during the regular season, but apparently he hasn’t given up on playing football just yet.

On Tuesday the man formerly known as Ochocinco was with the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL on Tuesday, which was the start of their three-day minicamp. The Alouettes’ season begins in June and it looks as though, at this point, Johnson may be with the team when it does.

The former Bengals receiver is just happy for the opportunity to play the game he loves again. After a very successful decade in Cincinnati, Johnson left town and had a supremely disappointing season with the Patriots, who signed him as a free agent, in 2011.

The following offseason he was picked up by the Dolphins, but was cut during training camp after a particularly ugly domestic incident with ex-wife Evelyn Lozada. The couple had been married just six weeks when Johnson was arrested for allegedly head-butting Lozada during the course of an argument.

Said Johnson of his return, “It’s just football. It’s football. It’s not about Montreal. It’s about the opportunity to be able to play football again, something I love.”

And he really must be doing it for the love of the game, because he’s not going to be making all that much money with the Alouettes—at least not by NFL standards. The salary cap in the CFL is $4.4 million per team, and at the height of his career he made more than double that himself in a single season.

With the average salary somewhere in the neighborhood of $85,000, Johnson won’t even make the NFL league minimum in Canada. Still though, he maintains it has nothing to do with money.

Said Jonson, “I don’t even need a check. Didn’t I give it all away for 12 years straight? Think about it. Did I ever care about money when I played throughout my career? Still don’t. I want to have fun. I want to enjoy the game. That’s it.”