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- Mar 19, 2019
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Leading up to the 2020 NFL Draft, which is scheduled for April 23-25, Vikings Entertainment Network is sharing draft-day memories from recent years and decades ago. Some might have had more memorable experiences than others, but all have stories to tell.
EAGAN, Minn. — Brad Johnson enjoyed a 15-year NFL career in which he started 125 games (winning 72 of them) and won Super Bowl XXXVII with Tampa Bay.
And to think, he almost became a school teacher.
Johnson was a ninth-round pick of the Vikings back in 1992 after starting just seven games at Florida State. Back then, the draft was 12 rounds long, and Johnson thought he had a chance to go to the Giants, but they went with a different quarterback.
As the rounds (and days) passed by, Johnson was already thinking about his post-football career.
"I was really a backup at Florida State my senior year, so I didn't have much game tape. Somehow, I got to the combine … I got to be one of the three extra guys to throw to receivers and DBs and linebackers and running backs," Johnson recalled to Vikings.com. "I thought the Giants were going to draft me. I knew they were going to take a guy in the third or fourth round, but they took Kent Graham. So I thought, 'I'm out.'
"Then I had the Atlanta Falcons call me in the eighth round. They said, 'Brad, if no one drafts you, we want to come as a free agent.' I didn't know how the NFL worked at that time," Johnson added with a chuckle. "I said, 'Listen dude, if I don't get drafted, I'm going to go be a schoolteacher back home.' That's kind of where it was.
"I didn't know how hard it was to even get into a camp at that time. I felt like if you weren't drafted, then you had no chance to make the team," Johnson continued. "That's why I told the Falcons, 'No, I don't think so, man.' I was going to go back to North Carolina to be a schoolteacher because that's what I got my degree in. But then I got the magical call. It's a pretty unique story."