JULY 11: Johnson will receive a slight raise for 2024, with USA Today’s Howard Balzer indicating his latest Rams contract is a one-year, $1.38MM accord. The Rams are guaranteeing Johnson $750K. This obviously pales in comparison to the eight-figure-per-year Browns contract Johnson inked in 2021, but he has settled in as a role player during his second Rams stint.
JULY 4: The Rams made the move to reunite with John Johnson last year, bringing the former Super Bowl LIII starter back midway through training camp. Working on a holiday, the club again moved to keep Johnson in the fold.
Johnson re-signed with the Rams on Thursday, the team announced. He will join some new safeties in L.A., most notably Kamren Curl. With Thursday’s agreement poised to extend Johnson’s second Rams stint to two years, this will be his sixth season with the team.
After the Browns cut bait on Johnson’s three-year, $33MM deal in 2023, he played in every Rams game last season. The 2017 third-round pick made eight starts and lined up with Los Angeles’ first-stringers in the team’s narrow wild-card loss in Detroit. Going into his age-28 season, Johnson will vie for another regular role at a position group that has seen some offseason updates.
As they did with Johnson three years ago, the Rams let safety starter Jordan Fuller walk in free agency. The Day 3 find wound up with the Panthers. The Rams replaced him with Curl, who signed a modest contract (two years, $9MM) despite being one of the top free agent DBs available. Curl’s contract overlaps with Russ Yeast‘s rookie deal. With both Curl and Yeast signed through 2025, Los Angeles also added Kamren Kinchens in the third round. Despite Fuller’s exit, Johnson returns to a more crowded group.
Johnson played 574 defensive snaps last season, making 42 tackles and intercepting two passes. Pro Football Focus ranked Johnson 77th at the position, however, and no free agency rumors followed the Boston College alum this offseason. Johnson played for just $1.1MM last season; it stands to reason his third Rams contract comes in at a similar rate.
Commanding the three-year Cleveland commitment in 2021, Johnson delivered good value for a Rams team that needed to keep hitting on later-round draft choices due to the lack of first-round picks available and high-priced contracts flooding the top of the payroll. Chosen in Sean McVay‘s first offseason in L.A., Johnson started 48 games from 2017-20. While the 2018 NFC championship game is better known for a missed pass interference call, Johnson keyed the team’s route to the Super Bowl by intercepting an overtime Drew Brees pass.
Johnson was initially one of the starters the Rams were comfortable parting with to afford their high-end contracts, but after the veteran DB tumbled off the eight-figure-per-year level, he has settled in as a role player back with his original team.
Johnson was an incredible player in his first iteration with the Rams years ago. His tenure in Cleveland ended more poorly. In L.A., Johnson was more of an unsung hero on the backend that featured Ramsay and Peters, and was versatile and reliable in multiple phases of the defense. I will say that Peters bear hugged Brees’ receiver on that overtime interception (that no call is the most egregious and most famous, but that entire game was a total failure of officiating across all five periods), but Johnson was in perfect placement as usual to intercept that pass off the tip/hit/uncalled hold. For his part, he made a great play, as he usually did.
We’ll see if he can recapture that form, especially considering the difference in talent that L.A. will feature across the defense, from the front to the secondary.
Correction: I was thinking of a different play. It was Johnson who ran into Thomas to get the INT. Definitely looked like P.I. to me, as Fowler seemed to hit Brees after the release. I still respect Johnson as a player, obviously.