DETROIT –– In the beginning, there were boots.
Not the polished cleats of Friday night legends, nor the gleaming sneakers of the rich and famous, but scuffed Timberlands, laces frayed as old prayers, hugging the feet of a five-year-old boy on a Detroit field. He was called "Boots" before he knew what the word meant—before he understood that footwear could be prophecy, that soles could carry a soul to salvation.
"Come here, son. What's your name?" Maurice Payne, whom everybody called Coach Mo, inquired.
"Desjuan," the boy replied, pronouncing it as DEZ-juan.
The coach squinted, tongue-tied over the name. The boy shifted in his birthday outfit—Timberlands too sturdy for kindergarten, jeans rolled at the cuffs.
"I'll call you Boots."
Desjuan Johnson
Maurice Payne, who would set "Boots" on his path, overlooks his team as they prepare for a game.
And just like that, the nickname stuck like gum to pavement, a label that outlasted childhood, outran poverty and outshone doubt.
Boots. The word became the young man's compass and creed.
Johnson's boots were his first armor in Detroit, where streets hum with the harmony of hardship and hope.
They cloaked him when his father, Dion Johnson, a gridiron titan who played collegiately at Kansas, caught a stray bullet to the head while stepping out to go to Blockbuster Video.
Desjuan Johnson
This photo of his father, Dion Johnson, who played defensive tackle at the University of Kansas, remains dear to Desjuan Johnson.
His life was spared, his life upended. Dion was left a shell of himself—he was totally disabled.
After an extended stay in the hospital and rehab, on March 27, 2004, Dion succumbed to his injury.
At the funeral, Johnson uttered words that pierced the soul of his mother, Lacreasia Stegar: “So this means I don’t have a dad anymore?”
“It was so heartbreaking,” Stegar recalls.
His father's absence yawned like an open field while his mother, LaCresia Stegar, scrubbed hospital floors until her knuckles cracked. Often, the world seemed too heavy for a boy who'd yet to lose his baby teeth.
"Zip up your coat," Stegar would say through tears.
"Be the man now," Johnson would tell himself.
He learned early that boots were for more than walking.
On him, they stomped down weeds in vacant lots-turned-football fields, kicked up dust as he outran his older brothers in pickup games, and stood tall when the ground beneath his feet faltered and felt like quicksand.
Detroit doesn't coddle; it calluses and carves. It tempers boys into men with hands rough from lifting more than their weight.
Johnson's childhood was a symphony of sacrifice—a single mother's overtime shifts at the local hospital, his grandfather Roland Stegar's lectures on frugality and investing, the metallic tang of hunger masked by laughter.
Stegar worked jobs that bent her spirit, but never her resolve. "I saw her cry before she'd go to work," Johnson recalls. "But she'd wipe her face, drop me at school, say, 'You got this.'"
His boots bore witness. They trudged through the snow to practice. They served as motivation through nights when the electric bill hovered larger than any linebacker.
At 11, he accompanied his mother to a neighborhood shelter, where she would pass beef stew to people experiencing homelessness during frigid winter days as his bootlaces flecked with broth and grace.
"He'd beg to go back," Stegar said. "Even when folks cussed us for running out of food."
Football became Johnson's dialect.
He didn't need words on the field—just a spin move that left brothers Dion and Dejon grasping at air; his tackles echoed like lightning cracks.
Pain? A footnote.
He once played with a fractured hand, hiding the swelling under his glove.
"Why'd you hide it?" Stegar demanded.
Johnson shrugged, "We needed to win."
College scouts flock to Detroit's Cass Technical High School like pigeons to crumbs, but they'd veer clear of East English Village because of the community's reputation for perceived danger.
Desjuan Johnson
Desjuan Johnson poses for a picture while at a Nike football camp.
But Toledo, a blue-collar beacon 40 minutes north, saw the diamond in the dirt. The University of Toledo became his proving ground—a stage where Desjuan's boots stomped doubt into dust.
Like in high school, where he played running back, fullback, kicker, punter, along the offensive and defensive lines, outside and inside linebacker, at Toledo, he switched positions along the defensive line like socks, a Swiss Army knife in shoulder pads. Coaches marveled. Teammates gawked.
In 2022, the defensive tackle amassed 65 total tackles, 16.5 tackles for loss, and 5.5 sacks, and managed to snag an interception and return it for 12 yards. Although draft pundits chided the 6-foot-3-inch, 285-pound Johnson for being undersized with suboptimal arm length, he displays tremendous strength at the point of attack and balance. He keeps his pads in the optimal position—not too high so that blockers can stand him up, not too low so that he's tasting grass. His speed and power put opposing guards in a bind.
He has a penchant for splitting double teams and the explosiveness to drive blockers back into the pocket.
Lacreasia Stegar
University of Toledo defensive tackle Desjuan Johnson splits a double team against NIU.
"He'd do anything to stay on the field," a tutor recalls. "Even if it meant studying playbooks under streetlights."
"He's the Aaron Donald of the MAC," former Bowling Green head coach Scott Loeffler said.
Yet the NFL draft is a fickle beast.
It fawns over pedigree and swoons over stats from SEC titans. Toledo? A whisper in a hurricane. For three days in April 2023, Desjuan sat motionless, eyes glued to a screen, while 258 names flashed—none his.
Stegar paced, her faith a metronome. "God's writing your story," she reminded him. "You can't skip to the end."
Then, the call. The Los Angeles Rams, his childhood favorites, traded for the final pick.
Then he heard the voice of the Rams' general manager, Les Snead.
"We want you, Desjuan," Snead said.
The words hung like confetti. Johnson sat back, not in defeat, but in reverence.
Mr. Irrelevant? Far from it.
"It means eyes on me eventually," Johnson said.
The NFL is a realm where legends stride, and rookies shrink. But Johnson's boots—now custom-fit cleats—remembered Detroit.
They dug into practice fields as he shadowed Aaron Donald, the G.O.A.T. of defensive tackles, whose work ethic was a mirror.
Stegar, who once watched atop metal bleachers, now watches from afar, her pride a crescendo.
"When they put him in, he makes noise," Stegar said.
In sparse snaps in the 2024 NFL Playoffs, Johnson amassed sacks in the playoffs, getting to Jared Goff, Sam Darnold and Jalen Hurts. At defensive tackle, he flashes—a quarterback sack here, a tackle for loss there—glimmers of a fire waiting to roar.
Teammates commend his quiet hustle and selfless demeanor. After practice, he frequently worked out with British-born David Olajiga, who did not grow up entrenched in American football, on pass-rush moves.
"I teach him things from my perspective," Johnson said. "I don't know if he was taught or had the chance to learn. Because, like, you can't expect somebody who hasn't really played football all their life to know everything at this level."
Coaches around the league scribble "Keep an eye on #92" in the margins of their notes.
BILL STREICHER-IMAGN IMAGES
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (1) is sacked by Los Angeles Rams defensive end Desjuan Johnson (94) and Rams safety Jaylen McCollough (39) in the third quarter in a 2025 NFC divisional round game at Lincoln Financial Field.
Off-field, his boots soften.
He frequently visits community centers where he spends time with children. Many kids want to play basketball with him; their giggles are now his gospel.
"I ain't going easy," he warns. He presents the ball to a child, like a matador to a bull, and their joy is his trophy. At home, he wrestles his TK-year-old son, Cree, whose laughter is the melody he most loves to hear.
Today, Johnson's boots, his cleats, rest at the foot of his locker, buried under sweaty practice gear.
His journey—from Timberlands to NFL treads—is no fairytale. It's a manifesto.
"Faith isn't a shield," Johnson said. "It's the path."
He knows the road ahead is unpaved. Critics still sneer at "small-school guys." Depth charts still test patience. His 222 snaps in 21 NFL games is a blink of a career, but he remains focused on the work.
"You never really want to accomplish one thing in the league. There are multiple things because once you accomplish something, you want to achieve something else," Johnson said.
"So, I can't set my goal to accomplish one thing. Of course, I want to get 10, 20, 30 sacks. Who doesn't want to do outrageous things? I'm shooting for the stars. But like I said, I'm taking, and will continue to take it, one day at a time."
So Johnson walks on, boots laced with the lessons of Detroit fashioned from faith: that humility is armor, that joy is rebellion, that relevance isn't given—it's seized.
And in a league obsessed with speed, Desjuan Johnson, Mr. Irrelevant, moves at the pace of legacy—one deliberate, indelible step at a time.
Johnson's boots now pace NFL sidelines, cleats biting turf, a boyhood dream etched into every stud. They sprint toward quarterbacks, dance with his son, tread hallways of hospitals and community centers where hope is handed out in Styrofoam cups.
Johnson's story isn't about where the boots took him. It's about what they carry: a mother's tears, a city's pride, a son's laughter and a promise that the last pick can still leave footprints worth following.
