A shirtless Fred Johnson stood at his locker in the bowels of the Caesars Superdome on Sunday evening, grinning from ear to ear, as his teammates shouted encouragement in the background that sounded like this:
“Yeah, Fred!”
“Hell yeah, Fred!”
Or just, “Fred!”
The moment was captured beautifully by NBC Sports Philly after the Eagles stunned the favored New Orleans Saints, 15-12, to lift their record to 2-1 and rinse the bad taste of a last-second loss to the Atlanta Falcons just five days earlier.
Then came Johnson’s words to NBC Sports Philly: “It’s been a long time since I played ball, bro. After that touchdown with Saquon (Barkley), I almost cried on the sideline. I ain’t gonna lie, I got emotional.
“I got real emotional because I thought I’d never be back, like in action. You know what I’m saying? Like I said, everybody knows some of my story. It’s just been a long time coming, and when I seen him run in and score, I got hype, I got real hype, and then I was just grateful for the moment and ready to go back out and do it again.”
Barkley’s 65-yard touchdown bolt gave the Eagles their first points of the game and a 7-3 lead early in the fourth quarter. Barkley then jumped into a gaggle of Eagles fans in the end zone after scoring. Johnson was there quickly to help extricate him from the mass.
Johnson, 27, had to step in at right tackle early in the game when Lane Johnson departed with a concussion. Lane was spotted vomiting on the sidelines. He is probably a long shot to play when the Eagles travel to play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday (1 p.m.).
The last time the 6-7, 326-pound Fred Johnson got meaningful snaps was during the Covid season in 2020 when, in his second season in the league after the Cincinnati Bengals signed him as an undrafted free agent out of the University of Florida, he played 491 offensive snaps. In the three years after that, he played a total of 127.
He became a reclamation project that Jeff Stoutland encouraged and coached up from the day the Eagles signed him to their practice squad on Nov. 8, 2022, to the point where he was ready to step in and play 54 mostly solid snaps in New Orleans.
Before that locker room moment with Johnson, he and Nick Sirianni had their own moment.
“One of the first guys that came in - when I was walking up the tunnel, I saw Fred, and it was only Fred and I in the tunnel. Just gave him a big hug,” said the head coach. “Man, I can see how happy he was just from the way he performed.”
Any Eagles fan can tell you the team’s record isn’t good when Lane Johnson can’t play. At last count, that record was 14-22.
Maybe this other Johnson – “Hey Fred!” – can add another win to that side of the ‘life without Lane’ ledger.
