You can build a perfect quarterback borrowing traits from the dozens of quarterbacks Josh Johnson has played with during a peripatetic eight-year career that has turned him into a homeless nomad with more hotel rewards points than one man his age should have.
The strongest arm? Colin Kaepernick.
The best football mind? Brian Griese.
The most elusive feet? Tyrod Taylor.
The most competitive spirit?
"I can't answer that one," Johnson said. "It's a tie. I've been around a lot of competitive quarterbacks that all compete at a very high level. A lot of people really don't understand our personalities. There's a fire that burns in a lot of quarterbacks, so I don't have a true answer for that. You've got to be wired different. We're like the closest thing to a coach you'll find as players."
And maybe one day when he stops chasing the NFL dream, Johnson will become a coach. More than one has told him he should.
Last week, less than 24 hours after the Indianapolis Colts released Johnson for a second time in two weeks, the Buffalo Bills signed Johnson as insurance while Taylor recovers from a knee injury. Buffalo is Johnson's fourth team this season. He spent much of the preseason with the Cincinnati Bengals, then went to the New York Jets as insurance while quarterback Geno Smith recovered from a broken jaw. After getting cut by the Jets, Johnson tried out for the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys and then signed with Indianapolis after Andrew Luck got injured. Johnson's first stint in Indy lasted barely four days. His second, a week later when Luck was still on the shelf and backup Matt Hasselbeck was sick in a hospital, lasted six.
Johnson has become the equivalent of a reliable insurance policy. If a team's starting quarterback is hurt, Johnson is your guy. He has played for seven NFL teams since the Tampa Bay Buccaneers made him a fifth-round pick -- 160th overall -- in 2008. He has five NFL starts on his resume.
At 6-foot-3, 198-pounds, Johnson has size, but at this point in the 29-year-old's career, he has something you can't teach: savvy, resiliency, experience in multiple systems and football smarts. And, as Johnson points out, he's got a fresh arm and a healthy body.
Johnson knows the rules: Work hard, be a good teammate, do what you're told, and keep your head down and a bag packed.
"Just really have the mindset of anything can happen and really just control what I can control," Johnson said. "I learned early in my career that really it's about controlling what you can control, because you never know when your opportunity might come. You might think you're never going to get an opportunity and the littlest opportunities may be the only chance to prove something. So I just try to live in the moment, because you never know when it will end."
Johnson said his career bouncing from team to team is more the NFL norm than most fans comprehend. It is life at the bottom of the roster, where often a player is merely a blip on the transaction wire. Signed one day. Gone the next.
That's not the professional career Johnson envisioned for himself after a stellar career at the University of San Diego, where he played for new Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh. He thought teams would always want to carry a seemingly unlimited supply of quarterbacks. As a freshman, Johnson was seventh on a depth chart that included eight quarterbacks. When he got to Tampa Bay in 2008, Johnson was one of six quarterbacks on the Bucs' preseason roster. Johnson didn't understand NFL roster math. He figured then-coach Jon Gruden would keep all six.
When the Bucs cut Bruce Gradkowski, whom they'd drafted two years earlier and who had started a handful of games, Johnson was shaken. He and Gradkowski shared an agent and had become friends. And then Johnson got it.
"I've seen the NFL's revolving door," Johnson said. "I've seen how that works. I saw that as a rookie. I just saw guys coming in for a week or two and then going somewhere else, and they'd be on another team, and you see them later in the year and they'd be on another team. I learned a lot. I paid attention to other people's situations, so that stuff doesn't surprise me at all. It's just the situation I'm in now, and the way I look at it is it's an opportunity. That's more important for me.
"It's a typical NFL journey, honestly, with guys people don't really know about. The simplest one. I'm used to the change of teams in the NFL. I've kind of experienced it my whole career. You just have to be ready for it and expect the unexpected."
It is a compliment to Johnson that while Harbaugh was the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, the Niners signed Johnson in 2012 and again in 2014. Johnson loves Harbaugh's intensity. He remembered Harbaugh throwing up while running with his college players one day during spring practice. He also recalled Harbaugh putting pads over his khakis and practicing with San Francisco's rookies.
"Coach Harbaugh's really competitive," Johnson said. "Being a former player, especially when I was in college, he still felt like he could've played, so he'd get out there with us as much as he could in conditioning. Sometimes he'd try to practice with us. He did that at the Niners, too. But that's kind of really who he is. He's a real football guy."
San Francisco was the first team to cut Johnson, who is from Oakland and grew up a Niners fan. That first time was the one that hurt the most. Now, Johnson is used to the drill. When he gets summoned to the coach's office, he knows the jig is up.
"I'm thinking about, 'OK, well this just happened,'" Johnson said. "You kind of put it past you and get ready to adjust to what's next. Are you going to be back on the street, or are you going to have another opportunity? You try to position yourself for another opportunity."
With Taylor out, Johnson was Buffalo's No. 2 quarterback behind EJ Manuel against Cincinnati on Sunday. He was the Bills' only active player who didn't play a snap. How long will he stick in Buffalo? Johnson has no clue, which is why he checked into a hotel near the team's practice facility.
The best thing about hotel living: "You can leave whenever," Johnson said. "No obligation. No lease. And they clean the room for you."
And Johnson hopes this time he might get to extend his stay.