Now healthy, Johnson ready to continue quest to ‘dominate' NFL

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LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Jaylon Johnson entered this season wanting to send a message to the rest of the NFL that he should be viewed as one of the elite corners in the game.

So it was frustrating for the Bears' star cornerback to be unable to help his team last Sunday as Kirk Cousins and Justin Jefferson tore up Chicago’s defense during the first half at U.S. Bank Stadium.

“I would definitely say for me, like frustrating,” Johnson said of his feelings as Cousins completed his first 17 passes in the Vikings’ 29-22 win.” I had a lot of emotions, really. I started kind of pacing really at some point because it’s like I know some of those things would have been prevented if I was out on the field. I feel like a lot of the game would have went totally different.

“But I am really just trying to see the bigger picture and I’ll see them again.”

Per Next Gen Stats, Johnson didn’t see a target during the first two weeks of the season. He has missed the last three games with a quad injury, but he was a full participant this week and will be good to go for the Bears’ tilt with the Washington Commanders on Thursday at Soldier Field.

Getting Johnson back is enormous for a Bears defense that has been prone to slow starts and was picked apart by Cousins in Minneapolis as the Vikings roared out to a 21-3 lead in the second quarter.

With Johnson out, the Bears relied on Kindle Vildor and rookies Kyler Gordon and Jaylon Jones to man the cornerback spots. The young defensive backs did an admirable job, but there’s no substitute for what a lockdown corner like Johnson brings to the table.

“It’s big,” linebacker Roquan Smith said of getting Johnson back. “I wish we’d have had him last week. But you know that’s over with now. It’ll be a great opportunity for him to get back out there. [Washington has] some pretty good receivers coming in – 17, 2, 1, all those guys. I think that’s the strength of their team – receivers. Having him back out there, it’ll be a great opportunity to show the world what he can do, too, on Thursday night football.

“A lot of people don’t respect him so I think it’ll be a great opportunity for him to show that. I’m rooting him on. I know he’s going to make some big plays coming back.”

Johnson’s emotions during the Vikings loss likely were two-fold: He knows he could have helped the team stop the bleeding earlier than they did, and he missed a marquee matchup with one of the game’s top receivers. The type of battle he welcomes because he knows he is ready for the challenge.

Before the season, Johnson said he would study receiver’s releases and routes on YouTube, watching single plays over and over again until they were ingrained in his mind. Then he would envision lining up across from them and go through how he would combat the moves he had just watched.

Hundreds of mental reps against the game’s best receivers. Being an elite corner starts long before you take the field on Sundays or even begin OTAs.

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Johnson has been preparing for his coming out party.

It got off to an impressive start, but the quad injury put it on hold. Now that he is fully healthy, his focus resumes on the task at hand – stopping the Commanders’ downfield pass attack – and the larger goal.

“Really, I feel like my whole thing this year is really about dominating,” Johnson said. “I feel like for me, it’s not just about dominating one game at the beginning of the season, I feel like I want to dominate throughout the whole season. Coming back healthy, just being ready to go, I feel like it’s just another step in the direction of dominating.”

Through two games, Johnson was the very definition of dominant. There’s no other way to spin 0 yards allowed per coverage snap as the nearest defender.

Those are top cornerback in the game-type numbers. Numbers Johnson expects to keep putting up in a season about announcing himself as the best in the game.

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