As I will continue to note the Cassville/Adairsville incident does not coexist with the Joe Johnston Joe Johnston said existed. If he really wanted to fight he would have found ways to force the issue. Hood and Bragg could make the AoT fight. If he didn't, it was because he didn't want to.
Hood got the AoT to fight at Peach Tree Creek. Fighting for the sake of fighting doesn't turn out great. But picking your battles, like Kennesaw Mountain and New Hope Church?
Yes, and Hood held Atlanta for a month in spite of marching the AoT to its destruction. Joe Johnston would have abandoned it and retreated with his intact army all the way to Mobile and surrendered there without a shot fired. He'd made plenty of fine promises of equal quality before, what happened?
He was sacked for retreating across most of northern Georgia with minimal fights and playing number games where Sherman lost heavily in one campaign and was back to full strength five minutes later. As harsh as it is, Bragg was a better army commander.
"Minimal fights" The Union commanders would disagree with this. The Union commanders would also have loved if Johnston had put his army at risk taking offensive action in northern Georgia, where it could be destroyed. Trying to force Sherman to make mistakes was the move. It almost worked.
And yet, at the end of the day, when he retreated to Atlanta with minimal bloodshed he recreated the same situation he did in Virginia in 1862 for the same reasons. Lee did better with the army he made than he did. Hood did worse because he faced Sherman, not Buell or Rosecrans.
By the point he'd retreated to Atlanta itself he created a complete no-win scenario where there were no advantages, only a set of losing options and he rendered all of his supposed promises that he'd for real for sure fight this time to be worthless. Why should Davis have believed him?
Cassville even more than Kennesaw Mountain was the scenario he said he wanted, and he just wimped out and retreated without a shot fired and let himself be outmaneuvered where Bragg and Hood outmaneuvered the corps commanders.