Golden: Texas legend Derrick Johnson adds to his legacy with College Hall of Fame election

Derrick Johnson received a package at his house on Saturday morning.

The former Texas star didn’t get into football for individual accolades, but when you put together a career as one of the best teammates in the sport’s history, the awards will follow.

The Saturday delivery was further proof. It was a football from the College Football Hall of Fame, congratulating him on being selected for its class of 2023.

“When I read the letter, it was a little overwhelming,” Johnson said Monday. “Even with the anticipating and understanding you deserve to be in, it was a great feeling."

The Waco High product played 14 seasons in the NFL — 13 with the Kansas City Chiefs — after a decorated college career where he left Texas as arguably the greatest linebacker in program history. These days, he devotes most of his time to his family and his Defend the Dream Foundation, whose goal is to eliminate illiteracy among economically challenged youth by refurbishing local libraries.

It’s that selflessness that made him a star. While his trophy case quickly filled with heavy hardware, including the Butkus and Nagurski awards in 2004 and later inductions into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, the Texas Hall of Honor, the Waco ISD Hall of Fame and the state of Missouri Hall of Fame, he never lost his love of the team concept.

“This is a testament to staying humble,” he said of the Hall of Fame honor. “It’s testament on concentrating on the little things. Later on you can appreciate the awards.”

When current Chiefs linebacker Nick Bolton broke Johnson’s single-season tackles record against the Raiders Saturday, Johnson gleefully congratulated him via Twitter.

You can expect two more honors to be coming Johnson’s way soon. It’s past time for the Longhorns to retire his No. 11 jersey. And he will one day join fellow Texas ex Priest Holmes in the Chiefs Hall of Honor.

Horns respond sans Beard: Chris Beard is gone for good. Now we need to figure out who these Texas Longhorns really are.

It’s too early in the Big 12 season to say they are having a crisis of identity, but this resilient crew has us guessing a bit of late.

Who'll show up against TCU on Wednesday night — the punchless defense that gave up 116 points in the last home loss to Kansas State or the physical lockdown crew that put the clamps on an athletic Oklahoma State group in Stillwater on Saturday?

Texas played with the right dose of poise and desperation at Gallagher-Iba down the stretch, getting some massive contributions from unsung OG Brock Cunningham and leading scorer Marcus Carr, who's playing All-America ball his senior season.

It was their first game knowing that their formerly suspended head coach was now a fired head coach. Rodney Terry is now 6-1 as the head coach and credit has to go to him for getting the Horns in the right mental space after a disappointing defensive effort against the Wildcats.

“I give my guys a lot credit,” Terry told reporters. “We won this game on Thursday, not today on Saturday. We won it back in Austin. We came off a tough loss at home and didn’t play very good defense in that ballgame and got away from our identity.”

And that’s in-your-face defense, multiple ball deflections and high effort on the perimeter. We saw all of that in  Stillwater and it added up to one of the best overall efforts of the year, even if the offense sputtered at times.

In TCU — Wednesday’s opponent — the Horns will get a big-time producer in Frogs guard Mike Miles, who's second in the league in scoring at 19.8 points per game. Jamie Dixon’s Frogs are off to a nice 13-2 start, but I’m guessing attention may have been elsewhere over the last couple of weeks on campus.

With that said, Texas will have its hands full and the Frogs figure to be pretty riled up after losing at the buzzer to Iowa State. It prevented TCU from joining Kansas and Kansas State atop the Big 12 standings at 3-0.

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The Horns have already established that they can score the ball with anybody and the ball movement has been the best we’ve seen around here in years, but TCU will present a big problem on the boards. The Frogs average a league-leading 12.87 offensive rebounds per game, which is a problem for any team because you just can’t coach that kind of effort on the glass. That’s all about want-to.

Above everything else, they have kept this ship afloat and played solid ball with the knowledge that Beard won’t be coming back.

“I’m proud of our guys,” Terry said. “Probably more than any group in the country, this group here has really stuck together. They have persevered through some adversity and some challenges and they’re stayed together. They’ve really focused on what they can control and kind of locked in and enjoyed playing with each other and being around each other every day."

Terry believes Texas’ best game hasn’t happened yet. We’ll see if the right Horns show up in what promises to be a barn-burner.

Cowboys on the skids: Now, I’ve been accused of often not seeing the bright side of things, but I’m going to the glass is three-fourths full approach when it comes to the Dallas Cowboys entering the postseason.

The Cowboys we witnessed against Washington on Sunday resembled one that was playing out the string of a 4-13 season and not one that came within a win of capturing the NFC East.

They didn’t show up.

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Dak Prescott completed 14 of 37 passes in the 26-6 loss to the Washington Commanders and had an interception returned for a touchdown in a zombie-like performance that just defies description, that is, if words like "horrific," "comatose" and "lifeless" aren’t good enough.

Prescott, who finished the regular season tied with Houston’s Davis Mills for the league lead in interceptions with 15, described his play in fecal terms, but the whole season shouldn’t be flushed just yet.

And that’s where my cup nearly runneth over. They didn’t end the season on this note and have a chance to redeem themselves, albeit against Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who aren’t much better than the Pokes.

Brady played into the second quarter of Sunday’s 30-17 loss to the Falcons, a game in which Tampa rested most of its starters in the second half.

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The optimists in us should be happy the Cowboys are getting a Bucs team that’s far from elite, but they also have to contend with an 0-7 all-time record against the 45-year-old Brady, who led the league in pass attempts and completions in his 22nd season. All indications are he will be back for Year 23, even if it isn’t with the Bucs.

The Cowboys have the look of a one-and-done — what else is new? — but they should go into the Big Sombrero knowing that they are the younger, faster, more explosive team.

That and $10 might get you a Bud Light at Jerry World.

And yes, that’s as full a glass as it gets.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas legend Johnson named to College Football Hall of Fame