When I spoke with Kansas City Chiefs CB Nazeeh Johnson in November about his recovery from a season-ending ACL injury, we took a break from talking about his past, his development, and the injury to discuss the future.

You never know what the future truly holds as a player in the NFL, but the former seventh-round draft pick’s faith was unwavering. At that moment, he knew exactly what the future held for him.

“They’ve got big things planned for me,” Johnson told A to Z Sports.

Big things were planned for Johnson as early as the 2023 NFL season before he suffered his knee injury. It happened in the indoor practice facility at Missouri Western State during training camp after the team was forced inside due to inclement weather.

Johnson had worked his way up from what was primarily a special teams role as a rookie in 2022. As of training camp, he was working with the starting unit opposite CBs L’Jarius Sneed and Trent McDuffie in sub packages. He had jumped up the depth chart to surpass his fellow “Fab Five” teammates Jaylen Watson and Joshua Williams, who were both selected ahead of him in the 2022 NFL draft and saw playing time the season prior.

He earned the opportunity and those repetitions through his work on the field and in the classroom, and when his injury occurred it was a devastating setback for all involved.

“I’m really sad to see that happen [to] Nazeeh [Johnson],” Chiefs DC Steve Spagnuolo told reporters in August. “He was really climbing. If you guys notice he was taking reps with the first group because he had earned it. He’s got a really good corner skill set. I mean, he played safety in college, but so hopefully, you know, we’ll pray he gets healthy real quick and gets back.”

In November, Johnson wasn’t quite cleared to resume running, but he was undergoing hydrotherapy to help regain range of motion. As of February, he was running and doing football-specific drills. It was the first sign that the comeback was on.

Exciting Injury Update:
After tearing his ACL during an indoor training camp practice in late July, it looks like our guy #Chiefs DB Nazeeh Johnson is ready to rock! Excited to have him back! #ChiefsKingdom @BrownKbrown3181 @JohnsonNazeeh pic.twitter.com/ug8nA9G4N5

— Chief Concerns (@ConcernsChief) February 18, 2024

Nazeeh Johnson is following the same track as L’Jarius Sneed did with the Chiefs
Sneed and Johnson have a lot in common, and their track in the NFL has been quite similar. Sneed played safety in his senior season at Louisiana Tech while Johnson was a former college safety at Marshall. Sneed did have the luxury of having played corner earlier in his college football career.

When Sneed was drafted in the fourth round of the 2020 NFL draft, then-Chiefs area scout Willie Davis felt Sneed’s best spot was probably cornerback. It didn’t matter that he didn’t play that position as a senior with the Bulldogs.

“Corner is probably his best position,” Davis said in 2020. “You have a long, fast kid with really good ball skills. Really smart. He understands how to play the position. He can play both press, he’s a long big kid that can get up in the face of receivers and play press corner, and he has the instincts and the knowledge to play off also.”

Chiefs area scout Cassidy Kaminski identified some of those same traits in Johnson, namely recognizing his impressive speed.

“You recognize that straight‐line speed right away,” Kaminski said of Johnson in 2022. “He lines up in the nickel and he’s in the hip pocket with these guys – the 4.35 shows up. That trail‐man coverage, he’s right in the hip pocket no matter what type of athlete is in the slot, he can match up with it. I believe that will transfer over to this league and he’ll have an opportunity.”

Johnson, however, didn’t get the same opportunity to play corner right off the jump. He started as a safety in his earliest practices in Kansas City, but the team quickly learned his skill set was best suited elsewhere.

“In rookie minicamp that I was at safety, and it was kind of like a big learning curve,” Johnson told A to Z Sports. “Because the safeties in the NFL have to know what everybody’s doing, make the calls, you got to be vocal. And really, on the field, I’m not as vocal. We communicate, but safeties have got to over-communicate because they’re the quarterbacks of the defense. So they moved me to corner.”

Just like Sneed, Johnson was moved to the nickel corner spot to start. He took to the position and the coaching from DC Steve Spagnuolo.

Could watch this over and over. Watching pro athletes be coachable and attentive is so refreshing. This was rookie safety Nazeeh Johnson today with DC Steve Spagnuolo working on, what I presume, technique at the slot corner position pic.twitter.com/wiYUpM5vb6

— Jacob Meikel (@NPNOWMeikel) June 15, 2022

“So, they made the switch going into OTAs,” He said. “I actually started at nickel — had a really good time at nickel. I understand the plays at nickel and then at training camp they said, ‘We’re going to move you strictly to corner. We’re going to have you learn corner.'”

What gave the coaching staff the confidence to make this decision to move Johnson to corner? They’d seen his athletic traits translate before their eyes.

“How they identified that within me was my accolades, my numbers, my pro day numbers,” Johnson explained. “Super fast safety, very explosive. So they were like, if I’m in the post, sometimes you’re kind of wasting that type of speed and agility, just roaming back there.”

Filling Sneed’s shoes won’t be an easy task
Replacing a cornerback of L’Jarius Sneed’s caliber isn’t something done overnight. The veteran didn’t allow a touchdown until the Chiefs’ divisional-round playoff win over the Buffalo Bills this past postseason. He was one of the few defenders Steve Spagnuolo has ever trusted to shadow an opposing team’s No. 1 wide receiver.

From an athletic standpoint, Johnson has the speed, explosion, and agility to fill Sneed’s shoes. The coaching staff is comfortable with his positional flexibility between nickel and corner, just as they were with Sneed’s flex at those two spots. The area that might be the most challenging is the learning curve in his transition from playing safety in college to playing corner in Spagnuolo’s scheme.

“The biggest thing I can say that a lot of people understand is like, it’s hard for a safety that played off the ball, never having pressed nobody in college to go and now you’ve got to press people who are used to being in press man,” Johnson said. “Now, I’ve got to learn a whole new technique while learning the playbook. While going against one of the best wide receiver groups in the NFL and a great quarterback that puts the ball on the money every time.”

Johnson wasn’t thrown into the fire the same way that teammates like Trent McDuffie, Jaylen Watson, and Joshua Williams were. They, however, had a baseline for playing corner, whereas Johnson had to learn everything from the ground up.

“I was doubting myself at the beginning, because it was hard,” Johnson admitted. “Like, you go from safety to corner, and now you got to get hands-on and now you’re getting yelled at for your technique, and everything, but they kept working with me. And I really appreciate that they worked with me. What I did this last camp was everything that whole year of just learning how to play corner, you know, trusting my abilities, and just doing all that stuff. And it’s all coming full circle. It’s why I was producing in OTAs and camp (before I got hurt).”

With eyes to OTAs in late May and early June, Johnson hopes to pick up right where he left off before his injury. He’s grown confident that he can play faster than ever before, and he’s out to prove himself once again in hopes of contributing to another Super Bowl run.

“I’ve got no choice,” Johnson told A to Z Sports. “I left off too good to not come back and be right where I left off.”