"Larry Johnson is taking a knee on the practice field now, watching the Chiefs' morning session and soaking it in.

No, he's not injured or exhausted. The foot he broke eight months ago isn't acting up again, not causing the shooting pain that ran up his middle toe and toward his ankle, even after doctors told him it had healed.

It is Monday morning, and Johnson is watching his teammates, the young running backs who might succeed him someday. He crouches for a few moments and then slides on his Chiefs helmet, running toward the huddle.

Ask him, and he'll tell you: This is his team - still.

"Guys follow what I do," Johnson says between training camp sessions Monday. "They can learn from what I do and as far as what I can do on the football field. That's what they should be following."

Johnson missed the final eight games last season with that broken bone in his right foot. He tried a handful of comebacks, and coach Herm Edwards didn't rule him out for a game until the season finale.

Now, there are no questions. Johnson is the Chiefs' feature back, for this season and, more important to Kansas City, of the immediate future. He is expected this season to shoulder a heavy load and is the centerpiece of new coordinator Chan Gailey's power running offense.

Johnson says he likes it. He's getting to know it, and he's glad to be the focus and the bearer of this rebuilding team's top responsibility.

"Any type of running game is good for me," he says. "It's not like a West Coast offense where we're throwing it 90 percent of the time. You know, we're over there running the ball a lot. It's a good offense for me."

The Chiefs are asking more of Johnson these days. They picked a running back this year in the third round of the NFL draft. Jamaal Charles is quick and young, seven years younger than the 28-year-old Johnson. The Chiefs think he, or 2007 fifth-round pick Kolby Smith, could carry the team if Johnson can't do the heavy lifting that his foot buckled under last year.

So at the same time Johnson is trying to outwork and outplay the young rushers, he's also trying to mentor them. They're watching him. It took a while for Johnson to warm up to the idea, sure, but he has come around.

"He's a cool dude," says Charles, Johnson's roommate in River Falls, "if you get to know him."

Charles says he is trying to get to know what Johnson does during training camp. And Johnson is spreading enough knowledge and experience that Charles sometimes has trouble keeping up. Stay off the ground. Keep your pads low. Watch the line. Know where to be and what to do.

Johnson says he has settled into the mentor role and his advancing age, which ran up quickly on the kid who was still a young, occasionally immature player two years ago.

"I've been the older guy in college," he says, "but I had five or six older guys who were in my position.""