The Las Vegas Raiders' NFL free agency signing of journeyman defensive back Lonnie Johnson didn’t set the NFL world or Raider Nation on fire.
It shouldn’t have.
To many, the unremarkable player was a “depth guy” at best, or an inconsequential addition at worst.
But that is for those in a hot take world looking for a quick answer.
GM John Spytek and future Hall of Fame coach Pete Carroll don’t operate in a hot-take world; they are deliberate men who understand the nuances of winning.
Both men are highly analytical.
Although their paths to NFL success differed, both men ended up with the same destination on their road map: the Super Bowl.
That is why the signing on Johnson intrigued me.
In fairness, I knew of him, but nothing about him.
Like many faces that enter the NFL, most are shipped out quickly, yet somehow, this man, despite not having “Lit the league on fire,” has found a way to stay in a league known for Not For Long (NFL).
Why?
That is the real question. That is the thing that I kept coming back to.
There are other, young options for the Raiders. Why Johnson?
Elandon Roberts, Eric Stokes, and Jeremy Chinn made sense to me. Johnson didn’t. But my opinion doesn’t matter.
Spytek and Carroll’s did, and they signed him.
The fact that Pete Carroll and John Spytek would be interested, and even want him intrigued me.
So I began to dig.
Even the Raiders press release announcing his signing, while well written, didn’t scream that this was a big deal.
But if you know anything about John Spytek and Pete Carroll, they are both very deliberate, and do nothing by happenstance.
Indeed not everything they do will work, but nothing they do is without purpose.
Here is how the Raiders announced Johnson:
Johnson Jr., a 6-foot-2, 213-pound safety, originally entered the NFL as a second-round pick (54th overall) by the Houston Texans in 2019 and spent three years with the club (2019-21) before playing with the Tennessee Titans (2022) and New Orleans Saints (2023) during his six-year career. He has appeared in 83 career games with 20 starts and totaled 173 tackles (125 solo), four interceptions, 15 passes defensed and one fumble recovery, while adding 25 total tackles on special teams.
Does that press release interest you? Of course not, and that isn’t the Raiders' fault.
NFL teams saw enough to pick Johnson in the second round of the NFL Draft, which speaks to his skills. However, the real story is that there isn’t much of one.
So why did Spytek and Carroll want him? Perhaps “want” is too strong, maybe they saw something.
Potential? Maturity? How about untapped potential?
They didn’t gamble. His cost was not high, but Vegas is known for the little bets that pay off.
While the Raiders under Spytek and Carroll aren’t averse to risk, they aren’t stupid.
Johnson was not a risk. He could be moved out without anyone worrying about the salary cap implications. But if he shows what people have been waiting for, the Raiders have hit the proverbial jackpot.
I reached out to someone from a previous team that Johnson was with.
I admitted to them that while I was aware of him, I didn’t see anything, yet that narrative doesn’t fit with what I know about Spytek and what I have learned about Carroll.
The NFL Executive told me, “Lonnie is a great guy. He is a good guy, but some guys need time to mature and grow into themselves. He has all of the intangibles, and is a great person. You want to believe in him.”
That's great, but the Raiders need players, not Sunday school teachers. His following words gripped my attention.
“When you look back at the Raiders’ past, there are a lot of great players that the organization turned them around. Pete was the perfect coach. He will demand and only tolerate Lonnie’s best, and if they can get it, he may end up a steal. I think it was the perfect place for him, and you can look at his resume and justify not having high expectations, but with his talent and maturity, it was smart that Vegas rolled the dice and waits to see it work out.”
Johnson said of his journey through the NFL and finding a home in the desert, "Man, it's been stressful, honestly. It's been stressful if we're really being honest about it. But like I said, I've got some coaches here that believe in me, and they want to see what I can do and give me an opportunity to work my way back on to defense and showing what I can do defensively, whether that's at nickel, corner, safety again. So like I said, it was just stressful, just bouncing around like that.”
But as Johnson continued, I was intrigued by these words.
A moment of vulnerability rarely seen in the testosterone-filled world of professional football.
In a few short seconds, Johnson showed why the talent that has yet to show fully and possibly what gripped the attention of Spytek and Carroll.
“And part of it was my fault, because I asked for the trade out of Houston, and I think it trickled down from there. So I was thinking something was going to happen that didn't happen, and it was a learning mistake, and I'm still learning from it, but now I'm ready to go and hopefully I can just make this home and just finish my career here honestly."
As I dug deeper on Johnson, something came more apparent to me.
It was Pete Carroll’s words on his very first day. Those words clearly convey a 20-20 vision of why Johnson is here.
It isn’t about what he hasn’t done, it is about what he could do.
Armed with the maturity of age, and perspective. Carroll told us what he wanted, and he and Spytek may have just found it.
"Well, the culture is the players, and you'll see that, but we'll show them the way. It all starts with competition. You're either competing or you're not. I'm going to make sure that that's really clear to these guys from the moment they get here. We're going to go out and draft a class and there will be a few free agents maybe we'll be able to attract, and we'll need to see those guys and we'll need to see what they're all about. But the competition part of it is theirs to command. If there's one thing that I want them to understand - and I'll start the message right now - if you want to be on a great team, you need to be a great teammate. Teaching what that's all about and instilling that in the makeup of our program is going to be crucial. The central theme in the program is always going to be competition, and that's where it starts."
By all accounts of people I know, Lonnie Johnson is a good man with a wealth of unrealized football talent.
Where better to grow into it and demonstrate that maturity than with a coach and GM who love to give opportunity to the hungry?
Johnson is hungry.
If he isn’t, he won’t be here long. If he is, Spytek and Carroll may have just signed their first diamond in the rough, and that is what makes champions.
