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Nebraska’s first winning season in years made possible because of a player who weathered the storms
Nebraska's first winning season in years was secured by a player who stayed through all of the troubled times.
www.nytimes.com
Nebraska’s first winning season in years made possible because of a player who weathered the storms
By Mitch Sherman1h ago
NEW YORK — Rahmir Johnson stayed. That is his legacy at Nebraska.
He stayed through a pandemic, when he was 19 and 1,300 miles from home and when life in Lincoln, Neb., looked nothing like what he was promised as a recruit out of Harlem.
He stayed through injuries and the disappointment of losing every year. Johnson stayed through a coaching change. He stayed when old teammates left and when new teammates came and left.
And this fall, he stayed through the unthinkable. When his mother, Angela, back in New York, grew “really, really sick,” Matt Rhule said, and the coach asked Johnson to go home and be with his family. Angela entered hospice care. But Rahmir said no. He refused to leave his teammates.
“This is what it means to be a Cornhusker,” Johnson said Saturday after his game-clinching, fourth-down run sealed an MVP performance in Nebraska’s 20-15 Pinstripe Bowl victory against Boston College. “I love this program. I’m dedicated to this place.”
During the Huskers’ bye week in November after the UCLA game, Johnson went home. His mother died. He confided in teammate Emmett Johnson, but Rhule kept it a secret, at Rahmir’s request.
“I told Coach Rhule, I don’t want it to be a big distraction,” Johnson said.
He didn’t want others to feel sorry for him and lose their focus.
No one outside of a small circle knew about his loss until Saturday. The Huskers had to pull Johnson out of the stands at Yankee Stadium after this victory to collect his MVP trophy. Athletes from his youth organization, the Harlem Jets, watched Rahmir’s final game in person. Family members gathered in the seats behind the end zone into which Johnson ran from 4 yards out on the first play of the second quarter for the first rushing touchdown of his sixth year at Nebraska.
Rhule choked up during the postgame news conference in revealing the story of Johnson’s final ride at Nebraska.
“Those are the kids that got me into coaching,” he said. “Those are the kids, the men that keep me in coaching.”
The secret to Johnson’s legacy is that this was never about him, Rhule said. In an age of college football when players sell out to the highest bidder and jump from a school for any of several complications and setbacks that Johnson endured at Nebraska, he stayed.
“He loved his mother,” Rhule said. “He lost his mother. He cares about this team. I think this is a fitting end for him. I hope he wears his pads home on the subway and goes to his apartment, takes that MVP trophy and takes it out tonight somewhere.”
Johnson was the picture of joy Saturday in victory. Next week, he will celebrate his 24th birthday. He graduated a year ago. He was a four-time member of the Brook Berringer and Tom Osborne Citizenship teams, the model student-athlete.
Undersized as a running back at 5-feet-10 and 200 pounds, Johnson was recruited to play in the up-tempo offense taught by former coach Scott Frost. But his slight stature held him back in the rugged Big Ten. In 2021 as a redshirt freshman, he flashed, running for nearly 500 yards.
An injury, as usual, stopped him from finishing that season. For Johnson, the perseverance to stay and fight at Nebraska defines him.
“It shows what kind of person Rahmir is, to go through that type of adversity,” said fellow sixth-year senior Ty Robinson, a defensive tackle who’s off to the NFL. “It takes a lot. The mental toughness that he’s had throughout the season has just proven how good of a man he is.”
A year ago in September, Johnson suffered a shoulder injury that ended his fifth year with the Huskers. He sat in Rhule’s office and wept. He later agreed to come back at Nebraska with no guarantees of playing time after the Huskers recruited the bigger and younger Dante Dowdell out of the transfer portal from Oregon.
Dowdell led Nebraska in rushing (614 yards) and in touchdowns (12) this season. But he entered the portal ahead of the Pinstripe Bowl. And there was Johnson, some 25 pounds lighter than Dowdell, but filling his short-yardage role in the season finale with a winning season on the line for Nebraska.
Up 20-2 with seven minutes to play, Nebraska had this seventh win seemingly in hand until — as the Huskers do — they removed a foot from the gas pedal and surrendered a touchdown with 6:11 to play.
Next, Boston College blocked a punt and returned it to the Nebraska 2. BC punched the ball across the goal line in one play. The Huskers got it back with 4:11 to play, plenty of time for the Eagles, flush with momentum, to get a stop and score the winning touchdown.
Freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola, on third-and-2 from the BC 36 with 2:58 to play, tucked the ball and slid short of the line needed for a first down. It brought up fourth-and-1, a long 1 at that.
The Huskers didn’t dare to try a long field goal on the wet, choppy grass. They were going for it, no doubt, and it was up to Johnson to ice the game. Boston College was out of timeouts. Rhule told Johnson before the play to get the first down and protect the ball.
He had one more piece of instruction: “Finish it the right way.”
The call: Stud Right 30 Hammer. Rhule’s had it in the playbook since his days at Temple. Robinson, all 310 pounds of him, entered as a lead blocker.
“I just told Rahmir to follow me,” Robinson said. “And on the edge, I saw three dudes, and they kind of stopped when they looked at me. And then I felt Rahmir hit the seam, and I got right behind him to make sure he could keep going.”
Johnson got the first down and 10 more yards. It put his career total at exactly 1,000 yards, the 70th player in Nebraska history — joining his confidante Emmett Johnson, who hit the mark earlier on Saturday — to reach the milestone figure.
“I hope Nebraska fans are fired up,” Rhule said. “We won the game in I-formation. Ran power and we made a great play.”
Johnson celebrated like a kid on the Harlem Jets after three snaps in victory formation.
“Personally, I wanted this one for Rahmir,” Raiola said. “I’m happy to call him a brother, and I love him like my own brother.”
Johnson said he returned to Nebraska for a sixth year to do something special.
“Everything I do is for Nebraska,” he said, “for this team.”
Johnson could have hardly scripted a finish like this, with tragedy wrapped in triumph. Miles from his family home and cradling the MVP trophy, he lingered in the tunnel outside the Yankees’ locker room that Nebraska occupied after his final moment in a red jersey.
A moment that happened only because Johnson stayed.