‘A bigger purpose:’ Inside Fred Johnson’s improbable path to becoming a key Eagles offensive lineman

There are a few common threads between each of the inflection points in Fred Johnson’s football career.

Belief has been at the center of them all. The first pivotal moment came when he was a high school student working toward “a bigger purpose,” sleeping on the floor of his South Florida home without the grades to make good on the scholarship offer he had from the University of Florida. That belief has flickered at times the last few years for the offensive tackle but has been restored since he joined the Eagles in 2022.

“At a certain point, I gave up on myself,” Johnson said. “And I stopped caring. I stopped being who I wanted to be as a person, the type of person I want my son to look up to as a father. When I got here is when I had the time to reflect on everything, and that’s something that changed me.”

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Johnson started the 2024 season as a key reserve on the Eagles offensive line and made a vital relief appearance in the team’s 15-12 win over the New Orleans Saints last Sunday when he came in for All-Pro right tackle Lane Johnson, who suffered a concussion in the second quarter.

Reflecting on the turbulent path he’d trod over the last decade-plus in the locker room at the Superdome, Johnson acknowledged there were times it was hard for even him to envision exactly how he’d find his way.

“Everyone knows some of my story,” Johnson said after the game. “This has been a long time coming.”

Johnson’s story — at least his football story — begins with one of the coaches at West Palm Beach High School persuading the hulking teenager to come to practice during his junior year.

He didn’t take to it at first. He didn’t even bring his pads to the away games as a junior because he knew he wouldn’t get in.

By his senior year, the sport emerged as a meaningful way out of a difficult situation.

Johnson said he came from humble beginnings, sporting the same pair of Converse sneakers long enough to wear a hole through the soles and giving up his bed to accommodate an extended family sharing one home. After moving into the living room, Johnson said, he and his cousin would “rotate” between sleeping on the couch and the floor.

“I saw peers getting arrested, getting killed, robbing people,” Johnson said. “Just that type of stuff. I had great role models in my life. I had people in my life that I knew wouldn’t be able to see me on the other side the way life was going. … I never strayed from the path, but I never had motivation to do anything until I started playing football my senior year. That’s when I felt like I was on the right path.”

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When Johnson finally did see the field as a senior, he quickly gained notoriety as a 6-foot-6, 305-pound lineman with surprising athleticism for his size. He became a three-star recruit with offers from Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia Tech, among others, but his final hurdle was academic eligibility.

He had to spend most of his final semester of high school making up ground and retaking the SATs, but he was able to gain his eligibility in time to enroll in Gainesville, Fla., the next year.

“I missed a lot of things my senior year,” Johnson said. “I was preparing for a bigger purpose, and I didn’t know what that looked like. I didn’t know what it seemed like. Nobody in my family went to college. Nobody went Division I or played sports at the semipro level or anything.”

Johnson started for the Gators early in his collegiate career, but things didn’t really click until he met Brad Davis ahead of his junior season. Davis, the offensive line coach for the Gators in 2017 and currently an LSU assistant coach, said he could tell even midway through Johnson’s time at Florida that his circumstances at home had left a mark.

“It wasn’t easy for him,” Davis said. “He came to college with some scars. It wasn’t your prototypical path for an elite high school prospect. In all ways, he was raw. He was extremely raw, hadn’t been polished yet. … There’s a lot of kids that just couldn’t overcome some of those things. They end up becoming victims or statistics. He didn’t allow that to become his story.”

Johnson said Davis reminds him of Jeff Stoutland, the Eagles run-game coordinator and offensive line coach. Each coach prioritized showing Johnson he was invested in his development off the field as well as helping him improve his technique to maximize his current 6-8, 326-pound frame.

“I wanted him to fall in love with the process of development,” Davis said. “The technical side, the fundamental side, the schematic side, so I challenged him. The physical part for him came easy, he’s physically gifted, but the big thing was wanting to establish a connection that was real.

“I had to show him how much I cared for him as a person first. And then once I earned his trust, he was then willing to allow me into his life.”

Whether it was Stoutland or Davis, Johnson’s highest moments in football often featured a coach who conveyed a certain level of investment in him.

“Those two specifically, they instilled a belief,” Johnson said. “And they cared.”

Stoutland has earned a reputation as one of the best at developing offensive linemen during his 12 years with the Eagles, most notably helping Jordan Mailata become one of the highest-paid offensive tackles in the NFL after joining the Eagles as a converted rugby player.

When Johnson signed with the Eagles, he initially resisted Stoutland’s intense scrutiny during his reps on the scout team. He felt his career was hanging in the balance after stops with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Cincinnati Bengals, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers ended with his getting released.

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By the time he joined the Eagles’ practice squad, the end of his career was starting to feel like an eventuality.

“When he first came here, he was a lazy [expletive], just mad at the world,” Mailata said. “I think just being around us kind of made him relax more, made him feel comfortable just to be himself and know we weren’t going to judge him. But also having a coach like Stout that was on his [butt] every day, he wasn’t used to that.”

Stoutland said the approach that eventually got through to Johnson may be part of his “secret sauce” as a coach. He eventually reached an agreement with Johnson that even if his on-field corrections were harsh in the moment, they were made in an effort to help the 27-year-old reach the potential Stoutland saw in him.

“I only get a certain amount of time with somebody,” Stoutland said. “For me to show that player what he can become, what you actually could be, how special you could be because of this factor or that factor … I don’t know if some of these guys were ever spoken to that way or ever shown that, ‘You could be this. You really could, but it requires unbelievable effort, unbelievable detail in the stuff that I’m coaching.’”

Stoutland said his and Johnson’s “mutual agreement” led to his taking off. After finishing the 2022 season on the practice squad, he signed a two-year contract with the team after training camp the next summer.

Johnson showed even more progress this summer, earning the backup swing tackle job with a strong training camp. Head coach Nick Sirianni pointed to him as the player who showed the most year-over-year improvement.

“He took it more serious, especially this year,” Mailata said. “He took it serious, and he’s been phenomenal. I think that’s just being around a group of guys that have been under Stout for so long and understand how the culture needs to be in that room and how guys need to be led. It’s either you catch up or you fall behind. He caught up because he chose to.”

Last Sunday’s game against the Saints was Johnson’s first true chance to showcase the jab he worked on all summer.

Johnson incorporated a boxing routine into his training regimen the last two offseasons in Florida. He typically would go through circuit training before sparring eight to 10 rounds with Florida trainer Mike Heath.

“Real workouts, he’s not just jogging around in circles,” Heath said. “He’ll skip rope, shadow box, then do 30-30-10, which is 30 jumping jacks, 30 mountain climbers, 10 burpees. Real boxing, not no cardio [stuff] or him just punching around. Real-deal Holyfield [stuff].”

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Heath said he has trained a handful of NFL players as well as professional fighters, but he said Johnson’s ability in the ring makes him wish he’d have met him before he chose football.

“Fred is definitely the hardest-hitting individual I’ve met that’s just a civilian and not a pro fighter,” Heath said. “But it’s the speed-to-power ratio. He’s as fast as someone who is 180 or 170 [pounds], but he hits and you can feel it as hard as somebody that is 350.”

That strike is something Mailata noticed from Johnson quickly once he joined the team, along with the fact that he wasn’t physically overmatched standing next to either 6-8 Mailata or 6-7 Landon Dickerson.

“The first week he came in and we were like, ‘Who the [expletive] is this big dog?’” Mailata said. “And he had tremendous power with his hands. We were like, ‘Man, if this guy can get his [stuff] together, he’s going to be unstoppable.’ He’s got raw power, man. Like heavy hands. He’s a heavy hitter.”

According to Pro Football Focus, Johnson didn’t allow a sack or a quarterback hit in his 53 snaps against New Orleans. He also earned the second-highest grade among the Eagles’ offensive linemen for his run-blocking.

With Lane Johnson entering the weekend questionable with a concussion, Fred Johnson may be called into action once again this Sunday against the Buccaneers for his first start since the 2021 season.

Although he and Stoutland shared a congratulatory moment on the flight home from New Orleans, Johnson said their first interaction to start the week of preparation for the Bucs game was back to normal.

“After the game, he said, ‘I’m proud of you,’ and dapped me up,” Johnson said. “Monday, he came in and was like, ‘Last week is gone. We’re going to focus on this next week.’ He told me, ‘Don’t drink the poison. Sniff it, don’t drink it. Don’t let it get to your head.’”

The Eagles play in Week 4 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from Raymond James Stadium.