Tech DE Johnson is a force on-and-off the field

Football practice was over and coaches were gone. The equipment sheds were locked, and student managers were sitting in a golf cart, ready to roll. Michael Johnson was one of three Georgia Tech players still hanging around. So, the managers sat.

Two days earlier, the managers ran off a straggling reporter in a similar situation.

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Elissa Eubanks/eeubanks@ajc.com

Tech defensive end Michael Johnson suffered physical setbacks the past two seasons.

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They knew better this time. “They’d have to put me in handcuffs,” said the senior defensive end. “When somebody wants to talk about ‘the Word,’ I’m going to talk.”

Not one to be pushed, Johnson is digging in at Tech. He’s trying to fulfill his potential on the field, where some believe he will be first-round pick in next year’s NFL draft if stays healthy, and off, where new confidence has made him more willing than ever to talk about the Bible.

“I passed up too many opportunities to speak on the Word in the past,” he said. “I will never do that again.”

Healed, going forward

Johnson is quite a combination: 6 feet 7, 260 pounds of muscle, speed and quickness with a motor that coach Paul Johnson said never quits. And he has faith enough to believe that while he may be mortal, it’s just barely.

He’s healthy after operations to repair muscles torn from his pubic bone slowed him entering the past two seasons, and now he wants to aid others when not crushing them.

Previously spiritual yet soft-spoken, Johnson returned from a two-week course of intense Bible study in Ohio this summer emboldened. He’s louder now. Subject: the Bible, or the Word, as he refers to its text. He has recruited teammates Osahon Tongo, Anthony Barnes, Martin Frierson, Antonio Wilson, Willie White and Anthony Egbuniwe — all defensive players — into a football fellowship of sorts. They pray after every practice, and will meet at least once a week to try to better understand the Bible.

“We even had discussions where we went back to the room and argued about what things [in the Bible] meant,” said Tongo, a redshirt freshman who said he is Catholic. “It was Matthew 26:11.” (“For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.”)

Johnson remembered: “We looked at the Bible, and Googled on the Internet the Hebrew translation. We were able to get a better understanding of what the verse was saying.”

Johnson’s parents, Sam and Thomasene, have taught their son and his older sister to try to apply the Bible’s words to their lives. They are followers of The Way International, based in New Knoxville, Ohio. According to the Rev. Don Lomax, a staff member and teacher at TWI, it is a research and teaching ministry that tries to help those who are interested in understanding the Bible to understand it better.

Sam Johnson, raised a Presbyterian but no longer a regular church attendee, has been to New Knoxville several times. He and his wife, no longer a Baptist as she was reared, have led fellowship meetings out of their Selma, Ala., home for some 30 years. Followers of The Way International believe the Bible interprets itself. Understanding those interpretations, however, sometimes takes work. Michael Johnson says the King James Bible is ground zero.

“If you look at a lot of the verses, when they translate the words are changed,” he said. “The original scrolls were in one language … and then it was translated to Greek or Aramaic or some other stuff. So you can have meanings lost in translation.”

That’s big stuff. And Johnson was a big sight when he showed up at The Way International headquarters for advanced Bible study in June.

“A gentle giant,” Lomax said. “To meet Michael for the first time, just to see his heart for the Word, and see him develop and blossom was wonderful.”

Views offered, not forced

It may seem a fine line between proselytizing and simply helping others understand the Bible.

“You never want to try to force anything on anybody. That’s not how it’s done,” Michael Johnson said. “I might say, ‘Hey, man, we’re having fellowship. Feel free to come hear the Word and apply it in your life.’ It’s non-denominational. Nobody’s trying to get anybody to join anything.”

Sam Johnson said, “We are not Bible freaks, so to speak, that everything that comes out of our mouth is quoting scripture, because that is a turnoff. It is Bible studies.”

So Barnes, who is Pentecostal, studies.

“I just want to strengthen my relationship with God, and learn more about him,” Barnes said. “Mike went off to the advanced class [in Ohio], and he wanted us all to get the same thing he got.”

Johnson, who also is active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Tech with chaplain Derrick Moore, said he went to the Bible when he had surgery in 2006 before his sophomore season and missed the first two games.

Still, he had five sacks that season, including dropping Maryland’s Sam Hollenbach on the Terrapins’ final two plays to secure a 27-23 win.

The next spring: another tear, more surgery.

“I couldn’t work out the entire offseason [before his junior season],” he said. “If you get hurt, you’re scared. ‘Am I going to be able to come back 100 percent?’ But if you go to the Word, God is not giving the spirit of fear. “When we get hurt, that’s just temptation for us to doubt God and his word. You let it roll off like water off a duck’s back, as my mama used to say.”

Something’s working. Despite starting just two college games, and registering a modest 10 sacks and 61 tackles in three seasons, NFL scouts have seen enough to know that if healthy, Johnson can be a menace, a potential millionaire.

His recruits have taken note, and took an introductory The Way International Bible study class.

“The class is awesome,” Barnes said. “It got deep into everything you could think of. Every year I go home and I talk to [Cartersville] seniors, and I tell them everything about me is because of Michael, how I got in contact with God.”

Johnson said seeing is believing: “[Teammates] have seen what happened with me. I could have redshirted my sophomore or junior season [after surgeries]. But I wanted to help.”

Teammates say he has, and is — without hitting anyone.