The professional football world today is celebrating the career of JIMMY JOHNSON, a versatile and gifted all-around athlete who became a dominant cornerback in the National Football League over 16 seasons, all spent with the San Francisco 49ers.
A member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 1994, Johnson died Wednesday evening. He had remained in the San Francisco area after his career and had been in declining health for some time, his family said.
“Jimmy Johnson was extraordinarily athletically talented. The 49ers enjoyed the luxury of using him on offense and defense early in his career to fill team needs,” Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter said. “Once he settled in at left cornerback, he flourished. The notion that a ‘lockdown’ cornerback could cut the field in half for the opposition was true with Jimmy.
“Only rarely would other teams’ quarterbacks even look his direction, and more often than not regretted the decision if they challenged him.”
Born March 31, 1938, in Dallas, Johnson and his family moved to California in his youth. In high school, he excelled in multiple sports and captained his Kingsburg High football, baseball and basketball teams, eventually catching the eyes of college scouts.
He attended UCLA and became one of the Bruins’ top wingbacks and a key player in the secondary.
“I played a lot of football, maybe not as much as I wanted to,” Johnson said of his days at UCLA. “I could have played 60 minutes.”
One year, he earned UCLA’s “Iron Man Award,” given to the football player who logged the most minutes that season.
The brother of former Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson, Jimmy was an outstanding track star in his own right – a 13.9-second-high 110-meter high hurdler (and NCAA champion in that event) and a 25-foot broad jumper.
The versatility he demonstrated in college would pay off for the 49ers, who drafted him with the first of their three first-round choices 1961.
The 49ers intended to play Johnson on offense as a rookie, but he broke his wrist prior to training camp. With a cast limiting his pass-catching ability, coaches moved him to defense, and he responded with five interceptions. He moved back to offense in 1962, catching 34 passes for 627 yards and four touchdowns. Four weeks into the 1963 season, it was back to defense, as a safety, to shore up a depleted secondary.
The next year, Johnson moved to left cornerback, a spot he anchored for the remainder of a 16-season career that concluded in 1976. He played in 213 regular-season games, more than any other 49er at the time of his retirement, and a team record broken only by Hall of Famer JERRY RICE.
“He’s a real good one. Mark my words. He’ll be around for a while,” JACK CHRISTIANSEN, also a future Hall of Famer but in 1961 a 49ers assistant coach, said of Johnson. “He has the three requirements: tremendous speed, great reflexes and the willingness to tackle with authority.”
Recognized as one of the best man-to-man defenders in the history of pro football, Johnson’s reputation was so great that opposition quarterbacks threw only rarely into his defensive territory. Still, Johnson intercepted 47 passes and returned them 615 yards.
“Jim doesn’t receive much publicity because the opposition avoids him as much as possible,” quarterback John Brodie, a former teammate, said in an interview during their playing days. “Talk to veteran quarterbacks like JOHN UNITAS and BART STARR and they’ll tell you they call few pass patterns in Jimmy’s area. The only reason Johnson doesn’t lead the league in interceptions is he doesn’t get the chance.”
Dick Nolan, the 49ers’ head coach from 1968 to 1975, was a big Johnson fan.
“I coached three defensive backs I felt were great, MEL RENFRO and Cornell Green with the Dallas Cowboys and Johnson,” he said. “Jimmy is the best I’ve ever seen.”
Hall of Fame receiver FRED BILETNIKOFF also heaped praise on Johnson.
“I feel Jim is one of the best corners in pro football,” he said during their playing days. “I just hope he makes a mistake of some sort so I can get an advantage. He covers all the pass patterns so well.”
If opposing receivers respected Johnson, so too did he respect the opponents he faced each week.
“I don’t look at someone and think that he can’t beat me,” he said. “If you play long enough, you’re going to get beat. The question and the key to your effectiveness is how often.”
Johnson was named All-Pro four consecutive years (1969-1972). He played in three Pro Bowls and was selected to two others that he missed because of injuries. He earned a spot on the NFL’s All-Decade Team of the 1970s.
He won the Pro Football Writers’ George Halas Award for courageous play in 1971 (completing the back half of that season with a broken wrist) and twice received the coveted Len Eshmont Award, chosen by 49ers players and given to a teammate who demonstrated inspirational play.
In 1977, the 49ers retired his jersey at “Jimmy Johnson Night at Candlestick Park.”
“Jimmy Johnson has not only been a great football player, he has been one of the game’s finest citizens throughout his career,” Joe Thomas, the team’s vice president and general manager at that time said at the ceremony. “There is no one in the NFL who does not have the highest respect for him, both as a player and as a man.”
Johnson also was elected to the Fresno Athletic Hall of Fame (1978), Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame (1990), UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame (1992) and was a charter member of the San Francisco 49ers Hall of Fame (2009).
One of Johnson’s longtime 49ers defensive backfield teammates, Kermit Alexander, summed up his career this way: “He’s one of the most phenomenal athletes I’ve ever seen. There are so many things he can do. He’s an extremely controlled person and very, very talented. In the whole time we played together, I never saw him lose his cool, on or off the field. The reason his honors were so late in coming was that he never beat the drums for himself.”
The reserved Johnson waited nearly two decades before his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In presenting his brother for enshrinement, Rafer Johnson said: “Jimmy is a quiet man, but he played with determination and commitment. Most of all, Jim was, and is, a gentle man and a true gentleman.”
Jimmy Johnson’s legacy will be preserved forever in Canton.
