Fred Johnson was on the practice squad two years ago. And he wasn’t happy about it. In fact, he was downright angry, and you don’t want a 6-7, 326-pound man angry.
“I was mad at everybody,” said Johnson. “I was mad at any and everybody. I was on the practice squad. I bounced around the league a couple of times. And once you hit rock bottom, you hit rock bottom. It’s either you keep going down or you build yourself back up.”
Johnson spoke to the reporters before the Eagles took the practice field for the first time with the 53 players that made the roster after Tuesday’s cutdown day.
Johnson was one of them. He was one of them last year, too. He changed his attitude thanks to no other than offensive line coach Jeff Sotutland and, on Wednesday, he had changed his view.
He had never done an interview from the stage of the auditorium inside the Eagles’ training facility.
“This is new,” he said looking out at the row of seats, some filled with reporters. “I’ve never done this before.”
Asked if new meant in a good way, he said: “We’ll see.”
Clearly, Johnson is no longer that angry man.
“When I got here, I was so hard-headed, I didn’t want to listen to nobody,” he said. “Especially Stout. And Stout just said, ‘I’m not going to quit on you, I’m not going to give up on you.’ That’s just something I appreciate him the most for because I was on my way out of the league when I got here.”
Stoutland continued to coach up Johnson, and before last season began, the Eagles gave him some security in the form of a two-year contract that will pay him $1.125 million this year to back up tackles Lane Johnson and Jordan Mailata.
“He earned my trust just by never giving up on me,” said Johnson. “Just day in and day out. I was on practice squad and he was coaching me like a starter. I got tired of it. I’m like, ‘Please, stop.’ And then, when I finally got the extension, or the guaranteed contract, he was just like, ‘Hey, you worked for it.’
“And even now, he still tells me ‘I love you and you’re doing great things,’ and he’ll throw in his little two cents of what could be better. It’s just the way I take to coaching, and he’s not trying to belittle me or tear me down. He's trying to build me up.”
Johnson has reached a point where head coach Nick Sirianni singled him out after the Eagles’ second preseason game when asked who has stood out to him in camp.
“Fred Johnson is continuing to develop as a really solid football player,” said Sirianni. “He works his butt off. He’s a big man, right? You see that, and it’s hard to get around him. He just continues to put the work in that he needs to put in to develop at his position. I’m really pleased with how Fred has worked, his toughness and just his ability to improve each day.”
Sirianni’s words got back to his mom, who passed them along to her son.
“She was just like, ‘Look at my baby,’” said Johnson. “I’m like, ‘Come on, please, Just chill.’ It meant a lot because I work hard, and it was good to see that appreciation from somebody else, especially the head coach.
“And I think that next day, I had the worst practice of camp. So, it kind of went over my head very quickly. But it meant a lot to be recognized, that what I’m doing isn’t for naught, and the upstairs (people) are seeing what I’m doing. It was very, very humbling.”
