On Monday morning, June 29, former Tennessee Titans running back Chris Johnson announced on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
During the interview, Johnson, 40, said that he began to notice weakness in his right hand and it just progressed from there over the last year.
Johnson has been retired from the NFL since 2017 following a memorable 10-season career in the NFL, playing with the Titans, New York Jets and Arizona Cardinals.
Long before Johnson was setting the NFL landscape ablaze as one of the league’s fastest players, however, he was an underrecruited high school back who made a name for himself at East Carolina University and was eventually taken as a first round draft pick.
Here’s a look back at Johnson’s road from preps standout to one of the few men to rush for over 2,000 yards in the NFL.
A football and track star in Orlando
Coming out of high school, Johnson was not the big name that he would ultimately become in the NFL.
He played at Olympia High School in Orlando where he was a running back and also a star on the track team. As a junior, he took over as the team’s lead ball carrier, rushing for more than 1,000 yards.
Johnson returned as a senior in 2003 but saw his final season cut short due to a leg injury that limited him to just four games. However, in those four games, he ran for nearly 800 yards and eight touchdowns.
That leg injury did not hinder Johnson during the track season. He finished second in the 100-meter dash during the 2004 Florida Class 4A state championship meet with a time of 10.38.
That year he set a personal best of 21.28 in the 200-meter dash, which ranked him inside the top 25 nationally that year. Johnson was also the anchor on Olympia’s national title-winning 4x100m relay team.
Even with that success in track, Johnson decided to go to college to play football. He was unranked out of high school and ultimately committed to ECU.
Rise from return specialist to CJ2k
Johnson went to ECU and instantly made an impact, starting in seven games and was one of the Pirates’ premier return specialists. As a sophomore, he became the team’s lead back, starting all 11 games.
Johnson’s junior year was his worst as he only started in five games and rushed for 300 yards on the season. The next season he returned to his starting role, rushing for a career-high 1,423 yards and 17 touchdowns.
In his four seasons at ECU, Johnson rushed for 2,982 yards and 32 touchdowns.
Tennessee selected Johnson with the 24th overall pick in the 2008 NFL Draft and he instantly made an impact. As a rookie, he was one of the league’s top running backs finishing with 1,228 yards and nine touchdowns.
Johnson’s second year in the NFL is regarded as one of the best ever by a running back in the league. With a career-high 358 carries, he ran for 2,006 yards and 14 touchdowns. He also caught 50 passes for 503 yards, making him the only running back in NFL history with over 2,000 yards rushing and 500 receiving yards in the same season.
From 2008 to 2013, Johnson played for the Titans, rushing for at least 1,000 yards in each of his seasons with the team. He would go on to play for the Jets and Cardinals in his final four seasons.
Johnson finished his NFL career with 9,651 rushing yards and 55 touchdowns on the ground.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Chris Johnson’s rise from high school track star to NFL great
