Neel Cole

Jaylon Johnson asked the Chicago Bears to trade him in 2023, and they gave him permission to go find another team. Nobody made a deal. He asked out on the last day of October, with hours left before the deadline. Talks on a new contract had gone nowhere the week before. Chicago was 2 and 6. ESPN reported that San Francisco and Buffalo were discussing it. Four o'clock came and went and he was still a Bear. He finished that season with four interceptions. He had one in his first three years put together. Then he made the Pro Bowl. On the 5th of March the Bears put the franchise tag on him, one year at 19.8 million dollars. Two days later they tore that up and signed him for four years and 76 million, 51.4 of it guaranteed. He made the Pro Bowl again the season after that. He grew up in Fresno and went to Central High School there. His father Johnny Johnson Sr. played defensive back at Fresno State and then went to work as a correctional officer. "He was always on us." Johnson finished a strategic communications degree at Utah in about two and a half years, because he did not want to come back to school in the middle of a professional career or after one. He tore the labrum in his right shoulder and kept playing on it for most of a season. He did not have it repaired that winter either. He went to Indianapolis and did the bench press at the Combine with it torn. "It was all about keep pushing through it." He had been talked about as a first round pick. He went 50th. Last year he tore an adductor muscle off his pelvis before training camp ever started. He went on injured reserve on the 22nd of September and had surgery. He came back on the 27th of November and played the rest of the way on numbing injections, and he said he was not pain free until the playoffs. Seven games was the whole of his regular season. At training camp in August the contract came up. It pays 25 million in 2027, and it would cost Chicago almost nothing to walk away from after this one. "I'm not a dummy." "It's definitely a contract year for me." TONIGHT, with three minutes and fifty seconds left in the third quarter, Baker Mayfield threw it short to the right side. Johnson caught it at the Chicago 33 and nobody laid a hand on him for 67 yards. It was the only touchdown Chicago scored after halftime. Caleb Williams threw four interceptions and the offense gave the ball away five times in all. Tampa Bay tied it at 24 with 2:51 on the clock. Cairo Santos kicked a 38 yard field goal with three seconds left and the Bears won 27 to 24. Johnson has still never played for anybody but Chicago.