The New York Times

by Mike Freeman

Last-Round Pick Is Starting for Niners

November 9, 2001

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 8 - As a wide receiver at Yale University, Eric Johnson was so far off professional football's radar screen that few of the major scouting services bothered to list him among National Football League prospects. Johnson had an outstanding college career, breaking 11 receiving records, but to the N.F.L., frankly, he was a “nobody”.

Still, Johnson harbored thoughts of playing in the N.F.L., and he decided last year, late in his senior season, that he would do whatever it took to accomplish that goal. Johnson's first step was to hire Joe Linta, an agent based in Connecticut and a Yale man himself, who is known for helping unheralded players get a legitimate shot at making an N.F.L. team.

Linta worked out Johnson last November to get an idea of the player's physical skills, and afterward he delivered some blunt news. "At the end of the workout, I said, `Eric, right now you have no chance in hell to make it,' " Linta said.

At 6 feet 3 inches and 226 pounds, Johnson had size, but he was astonishingly slow by N.F.L. standards for a wide receiver; he ran the 40-yard dash in about five seconds. In professional football there are 300-pound offensive linemen who run that fast.

Backward.

"I could have easily told Eric to lose 15 pounds and try to become a wide receiver in the N.F.L.," Linta said, "but I knew he wasn't blessed with the greatest fast-twitch muscles in the world."

We Can Rebuild Him

So, Linta came up with an imaginative game plan, one that succeeded so well that Johnson was selected last April in the seventh and final round of the N.F.L. draft by the San Francisco 49ers. He is now the starting tight end for one of football's fabled franchises, an unexpected outcome for any seventh-round pick, much less one from the Ivy League.

Linta decided that Johnson should spend two months, at $500 a week, with Scott E. Pucek, a trainer who has worked with such world-class athletes as Browns quarterback Tim Couch, Dodgers outfielder Gary Sheffield, Rangers goalie Mike Richter and the tennis star Monica Seles.

Johnson had to bulk up and lower his time in the 40-yard dash, transforming his body in a matter of months so he could play tight end, not wide receiver, in the N.F.L. Then Linta could sell Johnson to teams as if he were a new, hot stock, a rising star from out of the blue; if all went well, maybe Johnson could get a chance to sign as a free agent.

Johnson's transformation serves as an object lesson in how the beliefs of a perceptive agent, a player's exhaustive workouts with a skilled trainer and the player's determination can come together and turn someone like Johnson, a player with almost no chance of playing in the N.F.L., into someone who can make the cut and have an
impact.

To say Johnson beat the odds is an understatement. Simply being selected in the draft was a major achievement. Johnson's elevation to starter is rare for a seventh-round rookie. According to the N.F.L., of the 27 seventh-rounders from the 2001 draft who are currently on teams' active rosters, only two, Johnson and Jacksonville defensive back Marlon McCree, have started the majority of their teams' games.

There's more: Johnson is fifth in the National Football Conference among tight ends in catches, with 18 for 138 yards and a touchdown. He is a weapon on the 49ers' powerful offense.

"Sometimes I can't believe I'm here, that's true," Johnson said. "But when I look back, I did work hard to make it this far."

Johnson was given the cold shoulder by professional football in part because of a traditional bias by the N.F.L. against Ivy League players; many scouts believe players in the conference have mediocre abilities.

There have been exceptions, of course. Johnson's former teammate and good friend from Yale, defensive back Than Merrill, was also drafted in the seventh-round last April, although he was cut by his original team, Tampa Bay, and is now with Chicago. They were the first Yale players to be drafted by the N.F.L. in 20 years.

Some other Ivy league alumni are thriving in the N.F.L., including Miami quarterback Jay Fiedler, who is from Dartmouth, Minnesota center Matt Birk from Harvard and San Diego defensive lineman Marcellus Wiley from Columbia.

Still, a starting Ivy Leaguer in the N.F.L. is a rarity.

Johnson had one of the great careers in Ivy League history. His high point was a 1999 game against Harvard in which he caught 21 passes for 244 yards, including the game-winning touchdown. In the previous 115- year history of the Harvard-Yale game, nobody had more than 11 receptions.

Johnson finished his Yale career with 182 catches for 2,144 yards and 23 touchdowns. If he had played at Florida State, such numbers would have made him a first-round draft pick. But to many N.F.L. teams, posting those statistics at Yale
is insignificant.

Establishing a Game Plan

To catch the eye of an N.F.L. team Johnson had to reinvent himself, and with the help of his agent and his trainer he did.

Coach Pucek of the Sports Performance Center in Frisco, Texas, put Johnson through a rigorous six-day-a-week training regimen in Dallas last winter. It lasted two months and included strength, flexibility and speed development exercises.

In the end, Johnson put on 26 pounds of muscle, decreased his body fat percentage to 7 percent from 9 percent, and increased his vertical leap to almost 30 inches from 25 inches.

But there are certain numbers N.F.L. scouts love to see in particular: bench press reps and 40-yard dash times.

Johnson increased his bench press repetitions at 225 pounds - the standard weight used by N.F.L. teams to measure strength - from 7 times to 19; his time at 40 yards went to 4.74 from about 5.0.

"I had never worked so hard in the off-season," Johnson said. "I worked out constantly, and to be blunt, I ate a lot, mostly high protein stuff to put on weight. I was eating six meals a day."

It is not unusual for an N.F.L. prospect to use intense training to boost his draft standing. But this is usually done by potential second- or third-round picks trying to move up to the first round. Seldom does a player make the journey Johnson did, essentially going from nowhere to being drafted, even in the last round.

"Those kinds of numbers for someone who plays tight end are pretty good and bound to catch someone's eye," Pucek, Johnson's trainer, said.

But then Team Johnson had to get the word out. At the end of February, Linta filmed one of Johnson's workouts, made a videotape and began sending it, along with a kind of before-and-after dossier, to N.F.L. teams. Linta said he followed up by phoning each team in the league two or three times. He called about 10 teams in desperate need of a tight end five times each.

The interest was lukewarm at best. Not only was there the Ivy League bias, but many teams assumed that if Johnson had somehow managed to make himself into an N.F.L. tight end, he could be signed as a free agent. That way teams would not have to risk a draft pick, even a seventh-round one.

Only the New England Patriots, the Washington Redskins and the 49ers were intrigued by the possibility of drafting Johnson, and he was still a long shot. So Linta phoned San Francisco's tight ends coach, Tom Batta, and urged him to view the workout tape, which the 49ers had not yet seen. Batta liked what he saw and spoke to the scout Todd Brunner (brother of the former Giants quarterback Scott Brunner), who also liked Johnson. They showed the tape to the team's personnel chief, Terry Donahue.

But Johnson's football life took a dramatic turn only after the Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh, who was the 49ers' general manager then, saw the videotape at the urging of Donahue, Batta and Brunner.

"He demonstrated quickness of foot and nimble hands, and I was truly impressed," said Walsh, who is now a 49ers consultant.

Before Johnson's work with Pucek, quickness of foot was not a phrase that had ever been used to describe him. So, mission accomplished there.

Selling the New Product

Without meeting Johnson, and based almost solely on the videotape Linta had created and Johnson's workout results, the 49ers organization had fallen in love with Johnson's potential. Walsh was so determined to get him that during the draft he wanted to take him in the fifth round. Walsh was assured by others in the room that Johnson would still be around in the seventh round.

"I was that excited about him," Walsh said.

Within the 49ers organization, Johnson had earned the nickname Bill Walsh's son.

San Francisco selected Johnson with the No. 224 overall pick. In training camp, he displayed the same great hands he had at Yale, impressing the coaching staff. When the incumbent tight end, Greg Clark, was sidelined because of hamstring problems, Johnson was put in the starting lineup for the second game. In the N.F.L., one man's trauma is another man's opportunity.

"We have a long-term starting tight end," Walsh said. "Now I bet a lot of teams wished they had drafted him."

Johnson has experienced the highs and lows all rookies go through. During a Monday night game against the Jets on Oct. 1, he made a catch and then was stripped of the ball by a defender. That prompted the ABC commentator Dennis Miller to crack: "The kid from Yale has got to be smarter than that."

But Johnson also received a great compliment when people in the organization began to compare him to former 49ers tight end Brent Jones, who was also drafted by Walsh.

"The main thing I want to do is keep working hard," Johnson said. "I want to improve on my blocking and just contribute. I want to make sure the team never regrets taking a chance on me."