Chad Johnson says he’s working on him

Chad Johnson gave his first in-depth interview following his arrest for a domestic violence incident with his ex-wife Evelyn Lozada and being cut from the Dolphins to Showtime’s “Inside the NFL.”

Chad was emotional, almost to the point of tears during one portion of the interview. Check out a few excerpts below.

On why he was cut from the Dolphins
First of all I had an altercation. An altercation with my wife and the consequences of my altercation with my wife was me being released.

On The consequences of his altercation
I lost two things that I love: football and being married. Being a husband, being a lover was an honor. And I lost that. They have that saying, ‘You never know what you have until it’s gone.’ And now I finally know what they mean.”  I lost two of the things that really meant the most to me, that someone completed my world, completed me period.  But I just hadn’t made that transition to where I needed to be the best man that I could, or best husband that I could.  I didn’t make it all the way, fully. 

On who’s to blame

Brown asked: You indicated on TV that you did not initiate an altercation with your wife but now you are saying you did have an altercation with your wife.  Is that part of the process? 

Yeah of course. I don’t think I said that though on TV.  It is what it is.  I took full responsibility for it.  I apologized for it. 

I take full responsibility for everything. Always will. Always have. Where do I go from here? I gotta work on Chad. Chad has to work on Chad. Chad has to go deep down inside and figure out where you went wrong. At what point did you lose focus on what’s most important–Especially the game of football. There was a time where, when I touched that field Sunday, you knew what time it was. At some point, I had drifted off track away from that.”

On how he plans to address his issues
“I’m taking classes. Anger management classes. I’m trying to find out how to channel my anger in situations where I would pop off–how to diffuse those situations.”

On if he’s spoken to Evelyn
“What I need to do is work on Chad. There’s nothing I can say to her because she’s already heard it already. I can say it through my actions. Because actions speak louder than words. This is the time for me to show actions. Period.

At least one GM was impressed by Chad putting the responsibility on himself and is keeping the wideout on his radar per Mike Freeman, an NFL insider for CBSSports.com:

If football isn’t in Chad’s future, he looked extremely comfortable with hosts James Brown and Cris Collinsworth. There’s still the vacancy left by Warren Sapp.

I still want him to lay low for a bit.

Random and probably unrelated, Evelyn is back on Twitter and Instagram, one of the photos she posted on Wednesday:

“I smell Bullsh*t”… oh, ok.