When the league said last week that it had found a successor to V.P. of officiating Mike Pereira in Carl Johnson, PFT’s Mike Florio noted that we don’t know much about Johnson.
It turns out that not knowing much about Johnson is the prevailing reaction to the news around the NFL.
Peter King of SI.com writes that you “could have knocked over team execs around the league with a feather” when they heard that Johnson, who’s been an NFL line judge for nine years, was succeeding Pereira.
“Who’s Carl Johnson?'' one GM asked King.
No one seems to know much about Johnson beyond the fact that he’s a sales manager in Louisiana when he’s not working as a line judge. The NFL denied King’s interview request, and so far we haven’t seen Johnson speak about his new role anywhere. That will soon change, as Johnson is about to become the public face who defends the NFL’s officials on controversial calls -- or admits they screwed up.
