There was a time when Chris Johnson looked like the fastest man on a football field every Sunday.
Maybe he was.
If you watched CJ2K in his prime, you remember what happened when he found daylight. There were fast running backs, and then there was Chris Johnson. One crease. One missed angle. One defender who hesitated for half a second.
Over.
That No. 28 jersey would disappear down the field.
But when we talk about Chris Johnson today, I don’t want to start with ALS.
I want to start with Chris Johnson the football player.
Because before we honor the fight he’s in today, we should remember just how special the man fighting it was on a football field.
There Was Only One CJ2K
Johnson came out of East Carolina and ran a 4.24-second 40-yard dash at the 2008 NFL Combine.
The Tennessee Titans selected him 24th overall.
It didn’t take long to figure out what they had.
Johnson rushed for 1,228 yards as a rookie and made the Pro Bowl.
Then came 2009.
2,006 rushing yards.
2,509 yards from scrimmage.
14 rushing touchdowns.
NFL Offensive Player of the Year. First-team All-Pro.
And a nickname that will follow him forever:
CJ2K.
The 2,509 yards from scrimmage set an NFL single-season record. Johnson became only the sixth player in league history at the time to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.
But numbers don’t completely explain Chris Johnson.
You had to watch him.
There are players who make you understand speed differently. Johnson was one of them.
Defenders didn’t just have to tackle him. They had to calculate where he was going to be—and sometimes their angles were wrong because they weren’t accustomed to somebody arriving that quickly.
That’s what made him special.
Johnson eventually played 10 NFL seasons with Tennessee, the New York Jets and Arizona Cardinals. He finished with 9,651 rushing yards, 11,906 yards from scrimmage and 64 total touchdowns.
Those numbers deserve to be remembered.
But they’re not the reason I’m writing this.
The Fight Nobody Expected
Johnson revealed this summer that he had been diagnosed with ALS in 2025.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis attacks the nerve cells responsible for voluntary muscle movement. As the disease progresses, it can take away a person’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and eventually breathe.
For Johnson, the progression has been frighteningly fast.
Think about the cruelty of that for a moment.
A man whose identity to millions of football fans was built around what his body could do is now fighting a disease that progressively takes control of that body away.
Johnson can no longer speak normally and uses an eye-controlled speech-generating device to communicate.
But what ALS hasn’t taken away is Chris Johnson.
And that’s what came through in the letter he recently wrote to his children for The Players’ Tribune.
A Letter Bigger Than Football
Johnson addressed the letter to his four children.
Not NFL fans.
Not Titans fans.
Not the media.
His kids.
He told them about the first signs that something wasn’t right. A water bottle suddenly feeling unusually heavy. Weakness developing in his hand. Tests. Doctors. Fear. Eventually, ALS.
He wrote about having to tell his children that their dad had a disease that was making his muscles weaker.
And he wrote something that stopped me.
“My value is in the man that I am.”
That’s bigger than football.
For most of Johnson’s life, his body had been one of his greatest gifts.
It got him out of Orlando.
It took him to East Carolina.
It made him a first-round draft pick.
It produced 2,006 rushing yards.
It changed his family’s life.
Now he’s being forced to separate what his body can do from who Chris Johnson actually is.
Husband.
Father.
Friend.
Competitor.
Fighter.
That’s the legacy his children are going to know far longer than any rushing record.
Using No. 28 One More Time
Johnson could have fought this privately.
Instead, he decided to use the platform football gave him.
After publicly revealing his diagnosis, Johnson helped revive the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, calling on former teammates and players around the league to participate.
Marshawn Lynch. LenDale White. Pacman Jones. Fans. Former players.
People started dumping buckets of ice water over their heads again.
People started talking about ALS again.
People started donating again.
Some even donated $28 in honor of the number on Johnson’s jersey.
Think about that.
The same number football fans once associated with touchdowns and breakaway runs is now helping bring attention to a disease desperately needing awareness, research and treatment.
That’s impact.
Football Is Part of This Conversation
Johnson also raised a difficult question in his letter.
Could football have played some role in his ALS?
Johnson is careful not to claim he knows the answer. He doesn’t.
But after visiting neurologists and ALS clinics, he wrote about seeing research indicating former NFL players may face a substantially elevated risk of developing and dying from ALS compared with the general male population.
That deserves continued research.
It deserves uncomfortable conversations.
And it deserves something more productive than pretending we already know every answer.
What’s remarkable is that Johnson doesn’t write about football with bitterness.
Quite the opposite.
He remains grateful.
He wouldn’t trade the journey.
And despite everything he’s facing, he isn’t telling his children to run away from the sport their father loved.
He’s telling them their football journey belongs to them.
That’s powerful.
Remember the Man
The Titans are honoring Chris Johnson by placing him in the franchise’s Ring of Honor.
He belongs there.
The 2,006 yards belong there.
The 2,509 yards from scrimmage belong there.
The 4.24 speed belongs there.
CJ2K belongs there.
But someday, when his children tell their children about Chris Johnson, I hope the first story isn’t about how fast Grandpa could run.
I hope they tell them about how hard he fought.
About the man who faced something infinitely more frightening than any linebacker waiting in the hole.
About a father who was scared but kept being Dad.
About somebody who could have disappeared from public view but instead used one of the most difficult moments of his life to bring attention to thousands of other people fighting the same disease.
Football gave Chris Johnson a platform.
For years, he used that platform to entertain us.
Now he’s using it to help people.
And maybe that’s the part of his legacy that matters most.
We already knew how fast Chris Johnson could run.
Now we’re finding out just how strong Chris Johnson really is.
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