How fast life can turn.
Josh Johnson, the journeyman quarterback who has played with 14 teams in his 15-year career, was thrust into Sunday’s NFC championship game for the San Francisco 49ers at Philadelphia.
Remarkable.
On Jan. 19, Johnson was in his old high school gym at Oakland Tech, one of five inducted into the school’s initial athletic Hall of Fame along with Rickey Henderson, Marshawn Lynch, Alexis Gray-Lawson and Leon Powe.
Usually high school Hall of Fame members are far removed from their athletic peak. His daughter Jhai, a freshman, plays on the varsity basketball team.
“I was raised here from a little boy to a grown man, and I’ve always been at this place,” Johnson told San Jose Mercury News reporter Joseph Dycus the night of the induction. “I work out here and do everything here because it’s home. … It’s a generational thing, you know. My older brothers and sisters, and my mom all went here. My daughter is here continuing the legacy, and it’s exciting to see.”
On Sunday, after Brock Purdy, the 49ers’ third-string quarterback, was knocked out of the game with an elbow injury in the first quarter, Johnson was suddenly on a national spotlight.
He was signed on Dec. 4 by the 49ers (for the fourth time in his career) after Jimmy Garoppolo was injured with a foot injury.
See photos courtesy of George Anderson and Oakland Tech’s athletic department at the Hall of Fame ceremony:
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