Doyel: Once the No. 1 QB in nation at Brownsburg, Hunter Johnson now trying out for Colts
INDIANAPOLIS – The winds were blowing hard through Brownsburg the other day, knocking over trees and backyard tables and leaving shattered glass all over the yard of Hunter Johnson’s parents. Remember that wind? It was in the news. Remember Hunter Johnson?
So was he.
From 2013-16 Johnson was the best high school quarterback Brownsburg’s ever had, a five-star recruit, rated No. 1 in the country at his position. He was the 2016 IndyStar Mr. Football winner, and he was going to Clemson. You could see his future, we all could see it, but it didn’t look like anything that happened. The wind can blow. The wind can break things.
2016 IndyStar Mr. Football: Hunter Johnson's decision to stay home for senior year pays off
Johnson goes to Clemson, where coach Dabo Swinney is sitting in a golf cart one day in 2017 with Brownsburg coach John Hart. They’re watching spring practice, and Swinney is marveling to Hart that he’s staring at the best two recruits he’s ever had – he’s ever seen – right there on his football field. One is Johnson, competing during spring ball after graduating from Brownsburg that December.
The other is a recruit who has committed to Clemson. He’s there, watching practice. He’ll report in less than a year. His name is Trevor Lawrence.
No, life doesn’t always go as we expect. Hunter Johnson never expected he’d transfer to Northwestern, for example, but the winds were blowing through Clemson. Trevor Lawrence was a one-man hurricane, guiding Clemson to the national title as a freshman in 2018, getting drafted No. 1 overall by Jacksonville in 2021, playing in the 2023 Pro Bowl.
Johnson went to Northwestern, but the winds weren’t done blowing. During one unspeakable stretch his mother was dealing with breast cancer, his grandmother died, his great grandmother died, and his grandfather was going through heart surgery. This is when Covid was hitting. This is when Johnson was transferring from Clemson to Northwestern. You can imagine his head spinning.
On the field it was spinning some more. He’d played for four offensive coordinators in four years at Brownsburg, then went through it again in college. Between high school and college he had eight different offensive coordinators. True story. He played some over the years for Northwestern, but not a lot, and after his fifth year of college, armed with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern, he went back to Clemson in 2022. He’d been accepted into the school’s MBA program. He wanted to become a graduate assistant coach for Swinney.
Swinney had other plans. Clemson had never accepted a player in the transfer portal – Swinney doesn’t believe in it – but he believes in Hunter Johnson. So does the Clemson president. More on that in a minute. Swinney asked Johnson to play one more season, to use his NCAA-allowed sixth season, the so-called covid year. Not necessarily to play, but to lead, to mentor, to guide Clemson’s young quarterback room.
Johnson said yes. One more season of football, one more offensive coordinator, before getting on with the rest of his life.
But the winds keep blowing. They blew through Brownsburg recently, leaving shattered glass all over Hunter Johnson’s childhood backyard. He’s an adult, a grown man – married and everything – but he was back home with his parents when the storm hit.
Hunter Johnson was in the backyard, picking up the pieces of that table.
Why was he back in town?
To pick up the pieces of his football career.
Chris Ballard, Shane Steichen study Hunter Johnson
See the guy in the shorts, long-sleeved T-shirt and Colts hat? That’s Chris Ballard. He’s the Indianapolis general manager, presiding over the Colts’ annual tryout Monday for local prospects. The tall guy next to him, all angles and silent stares, is Shane Steichen. He’s the Colts’ head coach.
They’re studying the young man in the gray shorts and the No. 2 Colts-blue practice jersey: Hunter Johnson. He’s one of two quarterbacks here, joined by Purdue’s Aidan O’Connell, wearing No. 58. If you didn’t know better, if you didn’t know both players personally, if you didn’t know their college statistics, you’d swear you’ve got it all backward. That’s Aidan O’Connell? And that’s Hunter Johnson?
O’Connell throws a nice ball, gently arriving and generally accurate. He threw for more than 9,000 yards at Purdue. He completed 66.7% of his passes. Aidan O’Connell doesn’t need to look good here to get anyone’s attention. The tape at Purdue shows what it shows.
Hunter Johnson needs this. And he’s nailing it.
The ball comes hopping out of his hand, supercharged and accurate, exactly as Brownsburg’s Hart had been describing a few days earlier by phone.
“I will say, I’ve never seen anybody throw a better ball than Hunter Johnson,” Hart was saying. “A lot of guys, if they do everything fundamentally correct, they can throw a really good ball. The guys who can throw a great ball even when everything isn’t fundamentally correct are phenoms. You just don’t see it often. I mean, Hunter can make every single throw and knock a fly off the wall. His arm is elite of the elites.”
So are his physical testing results. Last month at Clemson’s Pro Day he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.62 seconds, and leapt 10 feet, 3 inches in the broad jump and 35½ inches vertically. Had he posted those numbers at the NFL Scouting Combine in March, he’d have finished second, athletically, to just one quarterback: Anthony Richardson of Florida.
He throws like a star, too. Johnson and O’Connell threw a series of short routes inside and outside, then stretched out their arms for deep balls and long, 30-yard out patterns. Twice I heard Colts offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter’s booming voice, and twice it was after a Johnson throw:
Johnson throws a pass in the seam to Illinois tight end Michael Marchese, leading him perfectly. Cooter shouts: “Good ball!”
Moments later, Johnson hits former Brebeuf and Marian receiver Jacob Pressler in stride on a deep out pattern. Cooter shouts: “Nice throw!”
Nine offensive coordinators in 10 years can take a toll on a quarterback’s processing in real time – Johnson’s combined numbers at Clemson, Northwestern and Clemson: 122-for-216 (56.5%), 1,100 yards, 7 TD’s, 9 INT’s – but at 6-3 and 200 pounds, Johnson has pro tools and will dig deep to find a league. The NFL is his goal, but he’s willing to play in the XFL, Canada, you name it. What he’s not willing to do, just yet, is give up the game he was born to play.
“My (college) career wasn’t what I pictured,” Johnson says, “but I wouldn’t change a thing about it. I met my wife at Clemson. I had guys from Clemson and Northwestern in my wedding. From the football side it wasn’t as cookie cutter as I thought it would be – that’s just not how it always is, and that’s OK – but I loved my time at both places and I feel like I’ve got a lot more in me to go and be successful.”
'Something’s not measuring up. I’m giving him a shot'
This is a different kind of family, and not because two sons played Division I football – Cole Johnson was a receiver at Northwestern from 2013-16 – or because one of those sons is in town to try out for the Colts. It’s a different family because of what Reed and Shana Johnson had Hunter doing while he was here, before the tryout.
“We put him to work in the yard!” Shana’s telling me, laughing gleefully.
Hunter’s out there searching for glass with the Shop-Vac, and before that he was spreading fertilizer or loading old appliances and computer monitors into a trailer and hauling it to Brownsburg East Middle School on Hendricks County’s most recent “Tox-Away Day.”
Cole’s around here somewhere, too, a recent graduate of the IU School of Dentistry who will inherit his dad’s dental practice someday. But not too soon. Cole has to earn it, one day, one week, one year at a time. He’s working one day a week with his dad now, then two days a week next year, then three and so on until he’s there every day and Reed Johnson will have to find something else to do.
“Good luck getting him to retire,” Shana says, laughing some more.
Hey, same goes for your son.
Hunter actually thought he was done playing when he applied for that MBA at Clemson, but Swinney’s offer reawakened the passion that has always burned for football. The years at Northwestern – seeing action in nine games from 2019-21, highlighted in 2021 against Michigan State: 30-for-43 for 283 yards, no interceptions and three TD’s – left the pilot light barely flickering.
“He’s always been in love with football,” Reed says of his son. “Every time he left the house, going to his brother’s baseball or basketball game, he had his football with him. It's like a kid carrying their binky or blanket forever. Typical Hunter, he was floating around trying to find someone to throw with, or throwing it at a tree.”
Hunter left a mark in 18 months during his first go-around at Clemson. On his return in 2022, walking back to his apartment after a game, a woman Reed guesses was in her 70s stopped him to say: “Hunter, I’m so glad you’re back. I met you one time at The Smokin’ Pig (restaurant), and you were so nice.”
“Of course I love my kid, but when it’s someone else, that’s daggone special,” Reed says, and now he’s remembering when a man in his late 50s introduced himself to the family in 2022.
“Your son is one of the finest young men I’ve ever met,” Clemson president James P. Clements told Reed and Shana Johnson.
Reed Johnson, the father, wants it for his son. He and Shana don’t hover, knowing how many different people have been and still are in their son’s ear, but they know Hunter wants it, and they’re not sure why it can’t happen.
“Somebody’s going to give him a shot,” Reed Johnson says. “Somebody’s going to say: ‘Something went wrong here. Something’s not right. Something’s not adding up. I’ve got to see more of this kid.’
“He’s a quality kid, extremely smart, a great freaking athlete, and he can spin the football like very few people can spin the football. Somebody’s going to fall in love and say: ‘You know what? I’m bringing that kid in. Something’s not measuring up here. I’m giving him a shot.’”
There he was Monday at the indoor practice facility of the hometown Colts, spinning it all over the place. Let’s see where the wind blows next.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Ex-Brownsburg, Clemson, Northwestern QB Hunter Johnson gets Colts shot
