Fred Johnson once believed he didn’t belong.
Take this locker scene and sweep it clean. Wind the clock back two years. There are no other players around. It’s just Johnson slipping on fresh socks, lacing his shoes, wondering why he even bothered trying out for the Philadelphia Eagles.
There was doubt in the big man’s travel bag; he only packed for one night. He stowed the rest of his stuff in his car back in Tampa, Fla. Perhaps this was the end. Perhaps after the Buccaneers became the third team to release him, after experiencing the indignity of clearing waivers, Johnson would just board the return flight scheduled to leave Philly in a few hours, climb into his car and drift into whatever post-football life awaits.
Johnson, an offensive lineman, is convinced the 2022 Eagles don’t need him. They’re 8-0. They have Lane Johnson and Jason Kelce. Jordan Mailata and Landon Dickerson. Isaac Seumalo and six other linemen who contributed throughout the season. Where does Fred fit? His uncertainty is solidified after his workout and after scouts tell him to get dressed and catch his flight back home. Yet, as Johnson is nearly ready to leave, the scouts return. Johnson stares at them, confused.
“We’re doing an audible,” they tell him.
“What’s that mean?”
“You’re staying.”
The Eagles sent for his car. They signed him to the practice squad. They gave him a jersey, a number, a locker next to the members who formed the NFL’s best offensive line — a group so complete that two words lingered with Johnson after he was told he was staying: “For what?”
It took two years to kill the inadequacy behind that question. It took the support of an entire position room to restore his belief. It took a sudden substitution against the New Orleans Saints in September, plus three subsequent starts as a backup tackle, to supply Johnson the full wisdom those thousand days between his last start contained.
“The mind is your greatest friend or your greatest enemy,” he says.
Johnson can talk about it now. He can contemplate the once-weighty topic of old insecurity as casually as tossing the water bottle he just sunk into the trash can in the middle of the locker room. (“I usually just sit here and try to shoot them,” he says.) It was often hard to remember that the job is also a game — especially after it had beaten him down.
Gratitude for a practice squad spot? Try disappointment and aimless anger. Johnson was “mad at any and everybody.” That had been “rock bottom.” How did the Eagles have any use for him? Their O-line kept steamrolling defenses along the pathway to Super Bowl LVII. So why was position coach Jeff Stoutland always in Johnson’s face in practice, he wondered, “coaching me like I was a starter”? Johnson “got tired of it.” He spoke out as someone who viewed hard coaching as pointless abuse.
Please stop.
“I was so hard-headed,” Johnson said earlier this year. “I didn’t want to listen to nobody, especially Stout. And Stout just said, ‘I’m not gonna quit on you. I’m not gonna give up on you.’ And that’s just something that I appreciate him the most for, ’cause I was on my way out the league.”
Indeed, lesser mortals might’ve long been expelled. But Stoutland saw potential within a 6-foot-7, 326-pound frame that couldn’t be dismissed. The longtime coach doesn’t give up on such projects easily. A month into Johnson’s arrival, Kelce, once an undersized sixth-round pick, and Mailata, a former rugby player-turned-star left tackle, proudly proclaimed themselves members of “Stoutland University.” The burgeoned blockers all knew what had been drawn from themselves could also be developed in Johnson.
Cam Jurgens, a second-round rookie in 2022, said Johnson’s talent was “obviously there.” Johnson was “tall as hell,” had “super long arms” and could punch the hell out of a heavy bag. Jurgens learned the latter when they did boxing workouts together during the 2023 offseason. Jurgens, who was then building self-belief himself, formed a relationship with Johnson at the NovaCare Complex lunch table. Like the others on the line, they bonded over jokes, stories and daily meetings.
“He’s a stud,” Jurgens says. “I think a lot of it is just people having faith in him and trusting him.”
Such virtues are required when injuries are inevitable. All the training Stoutland invested in Johnson, all the back-and-forth drilling as a left and right tackle, were unspoken signals that if anything happened to Lane Johnson or Mailata, Philadelphia believed in Fred as its safeguard. During a training camp presser, Nick Sirianni singled Johnson out as the player who had improved the most. Johnson didn’t see the quote until his mother sent it to him.
Look at my baby!
The head coach’s words “meant a lot” to Johnson. They also meant nothing. Johnson said the next day was his worst practice of training camp.
He’s since written a personal mantra inside the O-line’s meeting room. Whiteboards cover the walls. Linemen have scribbled messages everywhere. In a small corner section, where “nobody can really see,” Johnson wrote: Never too high. Never too low. He’s intent on never dwelling again on rock bottom. Or allowing hubris to magnify any future fall. But it’s been impossible for him to be completely emotionless while passing the thresholds he once thought were no longer within reach. His teammates, recognizing this, have purposefully propped him up.
When Lane Johnson exited against the Saints with a concussion in the third quarter of a one-score game, Fred Johnson subbed in and eventually supported a game-winning touchdown drive. Those were his most consequential snaps since the Bucs released him. (He played 33 snaps during the 2023 season-finale loss after the New York Giants went up 24-0.) Johnson said he almost cried after Saquon Barkley scored on the go-ahead 4-yard run against New Orleans. In the locker room, his teammates hollered, “Hell yeah, Fred!” as a scrum of reporters engulfed him.
“I’m so f—ing proud of seeing Fred answering the call,” Mailata said then.
They celebrate when their standard is supported. Nick Gates, a reserve interior lineman, appreciates how they “try to do everything perfect.” That’s continued post-Kelce. On the first day of training camp, Jurgens and Mailata made the group run gassers for “unacceptable” false starts. It all starts with Stoutland, they say. They aspire to what Stoutland calls his “Golden Locker,” the prototype who plays exactly as he desires. Since the prototype is nameless — a collage of film clips of former players — the implication is clear: it can be any one of them.
Mailata made certain Johnson believed this. Even as the starting left tackle limped off the field against the Cleveland Browns, wincing from a hamstring injury that’s since sidelined him on injured reserve, Mailata dropped his backup an encouraging wink.
“I was like, ‘OK,’” Johnson says. “That was pretty much it. He just exuded his faith in me and his confidence in me as a player and as his teammate. I’ve been here some time. My job is to execute when Lane or Jordan is up. That’s what I’m here to do.”
Johnson has allowed three quarterback hurries in his two starts at left tackle, per TruMedia. Against the Bengals, the first team to release him, he held three-time Pro Bowler Trey Hendrickson sackless for the first time in three games. Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore said there were moments when they had to rely on Johnson blocking Hendrickson one-on-one. Jalen Hurts, who was 16-of-20 for 236 yards and a 45-yard touchdown pass to DeVonta Smith, was pressured on a season-low 14.3 percent of his dropbacks in the 37-17 win.
“Just can’t say enough good things about what Fred did on Sunday,” Moore said.
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Sirianni extended the compliment to the right guard. Tyler Steen has twice filled in for Mekhi Becton, who exited in the first quarter against the Giants with a concussion. Steen, a 2023 third-round pick, also knows how development isn’t “a straight line.” He opened training camp as the starter but fell behind Becton after missing five practices with an ankle injury.
“Not everything goes exactly how you want it to go,” Steen says. “But that’s just how it is. You know what I’m saying? The only thing you can do is make the best out of it. I think every guy in our room really does that. Really. You know? Whatever opportunity they have, whatever the case is, they go and they try to make the most of it.”
Becton is yet another embodiment of their shared theme. A 2020 first-round pick by the New York Jets, the former offensive tackle has remodeled his career at right guard. Becton returned to practice on Thursday. No longer in concussion protocol, he’s on track to start against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday.
Johnson has never started in more than three straight games. He’ll almost certainly surpass that number with Mailata sidelined through at least Week 10. Johnson, who’s playing in the final season of a two-year, $2.4 million deal, can’t yet consider permanency. But he’s regained self-belief for whatever opportunity is next. He knows he can prove he belongs.
(Top photo: Nathan Ray Seebeck / Imagn Images)
