‘Believe in you’: The misunderstood boldness of C.J. Gardner-Johnson has the Eagles back in the Super Bowl

NEW ORLEANS — C.J. Gardner-Johnson is typically a man of many words. But in the aftermath of the Eagles’ NFC championship win, his tears did the talking.

Two years after clinching a Super Bowl berth in his first stint with the Eagles, the 27-year-old found himself in the exact same position in his second go-around with the team. As the Eagles solidified their win over the Washington Commanders to punch their ticket to New Orleans, Gardner-Johnson became emotional, sharing a long embrace with Nick Sirianni on the sideline. Gardner-Johnson didn’t need to say a word to express his gratitude for his head coach.

“It makes everything so surreal when you can leave, come back, and go back to the same spot you were just at, especially with a guy who calls you and tells you, ‘Hey, [I] believe in you,’” Gardner-Johnson said.

That sense of belief from Sirianni empowered Gardner-Johnson to return to the Eagles for a second stint. The safety signed a three-year, $27 million contract in March just a season after he turned down a multiyear offer and departed the Eagles in free agency, settling for a prove-it deal with the Detroit Lions. Howie Roseman said that “it didn’t go great” in the lead-up to Gardner-Johnson’s departure, but he envisioned the safety as a “good fit” in a new-look defense under Vic Fangio.

The 2023 Eagles defense had lacked the energy, toughness, and ball-hawking ability that Gardner-Johnson provided the previous year. But the prospect of a reunion wasn’t an automatic “yes” for Gardner-Johnson. A phone call from Sirianni gave him the assurance that he needed to put pen to paper.

“I wasn’t going to sign back in Philly until I talked to Nick,” Gardner-Johnson said. “I mean, everybody talks to Howie and Dom [DiSandro] and Jeffrey [Lurie], ‘cause they cut the check, but I wasn’t going to come back here until I talked to Nick about my role and who I am and the things I can do for this team.

“That call got deep. Almost like a two-hour call. Almost hour call. It was during the legal period, so I could talk to him. Just felt like we had to talk about some things that was very uncomfortable to get comfortable, if that makes sense.”

Despite any anticipated discomfort in Gardner-Johnson’s return, his teammates and coaches embraced him — all of him — from the moment he stepped foot into the NovaCare Complex once more. He brought his signature sense of passion to the starting role, leading the team with six interceptions (including one for a touchdown), which was the most by an Eagles player since his own output in 2022.

To the people who know him best, the often-misunderstood Gardner-Johnson is more than the “most annoying” label he earned in an anonymous player poll from The Athletic this season — his leadership, through his words and actions, has been one of the catalysts for the Eagles’ success since his return.

“I think how he’s matured as a leader and a voice that’s gone beyond the trolling of the opponent has actually become a rallying point for this team,” said Malcolm Jenkins, his friend and former teammate with the New Orleans Saints.

There’s an identical version of Gardner-Johnson’s unyielding motor within his mother, Del Johnson. She instilled it in all three of her sons because it was the only way she knew how to live.

Johnson grew up in the foster care system in Cocoa, Fla., as both of her parents suffered from drug addiction. She was perpetually told that she wouldn’t and she couldn’t achieve any goal she set for herself. Johnson said that issue was compounded as Black woman with a darker complexion than the rest of her family members.

“I’ve always had to work extra hard, twice as hard,” Johnson said. “So I always taught my boys the same. When you don’t grow up with that or with the support, for me, I do it to my children. I’m very, very, very adamant about, ‘Go get it.’”

When others didn’t have confidence in her, Johnson learned how to derive a sense of confidence from within. That self-love fueled her litany of accomplishments. She has two college degrees. She is a published author. She owns two sports bars. She has four group homes for children in state care. She’s working on a project building an assisted living facility.

Like Gardner-Johnson, her oldest son, Johnson has an “I-don’t-care” attitude. It’s not in a disrespectful sense, she explained. She simply doesn’t care what others think because she knows her potential. Her son has harnessed that same mentality on the football field since he picked up the sport at 4 years old, when he first declared he would one day play in the NFL. His confidence — which manifests in the form of trash talk nowadays — is often misconstrued as cockiness.

“Somebody said to me a long time ago, ‘Yeah, but he don’t have to be so cocky. He don’t have to be so arrogant,’” Johnson said. “I say, ‘Well, this is the thing. It’s not cocky, and it’s not arrogance.’ For me, this is boldness. This is who I am. This is, ‘I’m going to show you.’ This is God.

“I tell everybody all the time, God did this. And the moment that that goes away is when I would say he’s done with football, or what is wrong with my son? Because the C.J. that we know, he is very confident in his game.”

His teammates are well-acquainted with that sense of confidence. After all, his opponents aren’t the only ones on the receiving end of his on-field commentary. During one of the Eagles’ first padded practices this year, rookie receiver Johnny Wilson was tasked with blocking Gardner-Johnson on a play.

The safety tried to run through Wilson’s face. Gardner-Johnson punctuated the play with a line etched into the receiver’s memory.

“He said, ‘If you’re going to try to come and block me, do it,’ Wilson recalled.

» READ MORE: Inside the eight-cylinder mind of Vic Fangio: Eagles’ guru is one step from an elusive Super Bowl title

Ainias Smith can relate. Gardner-Johnson called the rookie receiver out three weeks into training camp during passing one-on-ones. Smith dropped an on-target pass from Tanner McKee, eliciting a comment from an onlooking Gardner-Johnson: “He ain’t done [expletive].”

Smith viewed his remark as “brotherly love,” a cutting statement meant to bring out the best in the receiver. Wilson interpreted his comment as a form of leadership.

“It pushes me to be better,” Wilson said. “If he’s just trying to get the best out of me, I can’t get mad or down or angry. It’s like, hey, I’m about to give my best, too. Make him better. I feel like that just trickles throughout the whole team. People just feed off of the effort and the energy that people bring.”

Since his Pop Warner days growing up in Cocoa, Gardner-Johnson has brought the energy on game day, too. Alex Goins, his coach at the time, said he was so vocal and so competitive at a young age that he even surprised the parents of his teammates. His high school coach, John Wilkinson, had to relegate Gardner-Johnson to the bench for a couple of plays here and there when his chirps at opponents incurred penalties.

Gardner-Johnson learned how to play his game within the rules over time, but he faltered in the Eagles’ Week 16 loss to the Washington Commanders when he was ejected for incurring two personal fouls. He apologized to his teammates in the aftermath and assured them that it wouldn’t happen again.

“He owned it,” said Christian Parker, the Eagles’ defensive backs coach. “And I think it was a moment for him to realize that minimizing himself for the greater good of the team is going to be positive. But still being who he is and just how to channel it. And I think that moment was a reality check for him on how to do that the right way.”

The next week against the Dallas Cowboys, Gardner-Johnson helped break up a skirmish after the whistle. Tristin McCollum wasn’t surprised, given the accountability the veteran safety took following the Commanders loss in the regular season. His growth since that ejection has continued into the postseason, according to Isaiah Rodgers.

“A lot of guys have been trying to trigger him throughout the playoffs,” Rodgers said. “And he even came to the team like, ‘Look. If I can be cool, I know y’all can, too.’ So it’s a lot of growth in the game for him.”

» READ MORE: Darius Slay brings his joyful energy to the Eagles. How much does he have left?

When Jenkins returned to the Saints in 2020 after six seasons with the Eagles, he received a text from Gardner-Johnson, who was going into his second year in New Orleans at the time. Gardner-Johnson, the Saints’ fourth-round pick out of Florida in 2019, wanted to work out with and learn from the three-time Pro Bowl safety.

Jenkins didn’t know Gardner-Johnson, a nickel cornerback at the time, but he obliged. The elder defensive back quickly realized that Gardner-Johnson constantly craved knowledge. Whenever Jenkins made a play, Gardner-Johnson wanted to know what the veteran saw from the offense. Jenkins would explain it to him on the tape. In practice, Jenkins would point out where he had opportunities to make plays.

With the help of Jenkins and his own dogged work ethic, Gardner-Johnson gradually became proficient in the scheme. By the following season, Gardner-Johnson wasn’t simply lining up and covering a receiver any more. He demonstrated a deeper understanding of leverage, gap fits, and how to play off of his teammates, too.

“When I saw that click, he played so much faster,” Jenkins said. “And I see it now, where he’s doing things that there’s no hesitation in his step. There’s no wasted movement. That is the mental part of the game.”

» READ MORE: Eagles’ C.J. Gardner-Johnson gets Malcolm Jenkins’ seal of approval

The mental part of his game is one that is overlooked, according to Jenkins.

“I think so much is made about how vocal he is and not enough is made about how intelligent he is,” Jenkins said. “I think a lot of times, people judge him kind of based off of the way he talks, the way he presents himself. But he is smarter than most people give him credit for.”

Behind Gardner-Johnson’s “rah-rah” intensity — which the Eagles lean on — is a smart, instinctual football player, according to safeties coach Joe Kasper. In order to play freely on Sundays, Gardner-Johnson has to put the work in throughout the week to eliminate any gray area within his responsibilities. Kasper called the “film junkie” safety’s preparation and attention to detail “second to none.”

Gardner-Johnson doesn’t keep his insights to himself. He shares his notes on Fangio’s defense, the weekly game plan, and the opposing offense with the rest of the Eagles safeties and linebackers, the position group the safeties work with closely on the field. He writes his notes on his iPad and AirDrops them to his teammates, sometimes multiple times a day, per McCollum, to ensure that the group is on the same page.

Zack Baun called Gardner-Johnson’s handwriting “impeccable.” The content of his notes isn’t too shabby, either.

“I’m seeing that he’s making plays based off of some notes that he’s taken early in the week,” McCollum said. “So it’s been nice to see. He’s really good at taking the information, processing it, making note of it, and then being able to apply it on game day.”

Kasper lauded Gardner-Johnson’s ability to identify run fits and determine where a run was going to hit, a skill set that was on display the last time the Eagles traveled to New Orleans to play at the Superdome. Gardner-Johnson stuffed Alvin Kamara on a third-and-1 Wildcat play, setting up an eventual turnover on downs.

“A lot of people are good athletes and you can react and respond, but when you start to see guys race to the spot and beat the offense to the point of attack, that is all preparation and pattern recognition,” Jenkins said. “And he’s developed that part of his game, like, tremendously.”

From the outset of her son’s NFL career, Johnson has noticed signs of divine intervention along the way.

It began the morning he was drafted. After all 32 teams passed on Gardner-Johnson on the first two days of the draft, Johnson prayed in front of a baby photo on the wall of her home she shares with her husband, Brian Johnson, who is Gardner-Johnson’s stepfather. Hung to the left of the baby photo is a three-paneled piece of artwork that reads, “Family, Faith, Friends.”

On the middle panel is a fleur-de-lis, which the Saints use as its logo. An hour after her prayer, the Saints selected her son. Now, her son is back in the city where it all began, on a mission to secure his first Super Bowl ring.

“This one makes me emotional, because I feel like, God, this is it,” Johnson said. “This is it. And for me, this is all C.J. wants. Because I think once this happens on Sunday, he does not have anything else to prove to anybody ever again.”

Gardner-Johnson said to play a Super Bowl in the city that drafted him is “kind of a dream.” But in his return to New Orleans ahead of Sunday’s game, Gardner-Johnson said on Wednesday that he isn’t as “riled up” as he thinks people expect him to feel. Instead, he said he feels relaxed.

“I guess I talk a lot of crap,” Gardner-Johnson said. “I guess [this is] where it started. But, I mean, the older you get, you understand what’s going on and the moment’s not bigger than any other moment. So you’ve got to continue to keep it the same.”

That perspective is rooted in experience. He fell short of the ultimate goal with his Eagles teammates two years ago at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs. This time around, he is working to ensure he doesn’t experience that feeling again. He’s bringing his teammates along with him, a leadership practice he adopted from Jenkins over the course of two shared seasons in New Orleans.

Gardner-Johnson uses that perspective to galvanize the group, both the players who were on the last Super Bowl team and the new faces. In the week leading up to the NFC championship game, he broke the team down at practice, reminding the team that every player is needed to contribute to the win at this stage of the playoffs.

He explained to his teammates that he talks “a lot of [expletive]” because he expects his “brothers” to back him up. The players listen, on and off the field, according to Reed Blankenship.

“It’s always like, ‘Play for your brother. Play for somebody else. Don’t play for yourself,’” Blankenship said. “He’s big on that. I don’t know. It just flows. You’re in the mode and it flows. Like, yeah. I’ll ride with this dude.”

But Sunday isn’t about proving the doubters wrong, from the ones who passed on him in the draft to the ones who overlook his play due to his talkative nature, according to Parker. Instead, he said Gardner-Johnson will play to prove the people who believe in him right.

“Some people might try to restrict him and his personality and you never get the best version of him,” Parker said. “So he feels like he can be the best version of himself and we embrace that. And I think that he more so wants to prove those people right than proving the haters wrong.”

The Eagles play in Super Bowl LIX against the Kansas City Chiefs. Join Eagles beat reporters Olivia Reiner and EJ Smith as they dissect the hottest storylines surrounding the team on Gameday Central, live from the Caesars Superdome.