Josh Johnson is getting another chance to lead a team onto the field, this time for the Bengals on Saturday night against the Chicago Bears at Paycor Stadium. The 40-year-old quarterback will start Cincinnati's second preseason game, a small assignment on paper that carries the weight of almost 20 years spent trying to stay in the NFL.
That is why people are looking at Josh Johnson NFL history now. He was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the fifth round of the 2008 NFL Draft, never won the starting job there and then kept moving, with stops including the Cleveland Browns and a year with the Bengals in 2013. He also spent time exploring options in the UFL and XFL before returning to the NFL in 2020, and since then he has played for five different teams.
For Johnson, the path has never looked straight. He was not a highly touted recruit out of Oakland Technical High School, and when he was being recruited he was listed at 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds. Jim Harbaugh saw enough to bring him to San Diego, where Johnson chose the Toreros over St. Mary's and Idaho State and later became the school's all-time leader in passing yards, passing touchdowns and completions. That background helps explain how a player who was never handed much at the start has kept finding his way back into the league.
The friction is that the Bengals are starting him now even though this has not been a career built on winning permanent jobs. Johnson has spent much of his professional life as the quarterback who arrives, adapts and moves on, while Joe Burrow and Joe Flacco sit higher on the depth chart and keep the spotlight elsewhere. Yet Johnson told Joe Danneman of FOX 19 that he is proud of the way he got here and wants to take every chance he gets to play, saying there is not just one path to success in the NFL or in life. On Saturday night, he gets one more chance to prove that the league can still find room for him.
