RENTON — The disappointment of not being taken in the 2021 NFL draft ended pretty quickly for Cade Johnson when his phone rang and he found Pete Carroll on the other end.
A few other teams also inquired about his interest in signing with them as an undrafted free agent. Most, though, had a scouting director or an assistant coach get in touch with him.
“But for Pete to call me, that meant a lot,” Johnson said. “It was an easy decision for me.”
The payoff of that call began to truly arrive on Sunday when Johnson — after two seasons spent on the Seahawks practice squad — made the first two catches of his NFL career.
One came on the first play of Seattle’s final possession of regulation on a 10-yarder over the middle from Geno Smith that jump-started a drive that looked as if it might win the game for the Seahawks before Jason Myers missed a last-play field goal.
No matter, the Seahawks got another field goal to beat the Rams in overtime, 19-16, and end up in the playoffs when the Lions defeated Green Bay later that night.
And that means potentially another game in the burgeoning career for Johnson, a South Dakota State alum who until two weeks ago had played just one NFL snap.
Johnson actually is still on the practice squad. But having emerged as the team’s de facto third receiver the last two games, he figures to again be elevated and play in the wild-card game Saturday against the 49ers in Santa Clara.
Johnson has played 26 and 29 snaps the last two weeks filling in as the slot receiver with Marquise Goodwin and Dee Eskridge on injured reserve, and also as a backup to Tyler Lockett, who missed the Chiefs game with a broken bone in his hand and suffered a calf injury against the Jets.
“He’s been playing this role for a long time for us and been really backing up Tyler,” Carroll said this week. “He’s the most like Tyler. And he’s been around here for a couple of years and all. He’s just been growing in the trust that we talk about, the trust of the coaches. They really know that he knows what he’s doing. So we believe in him. He’s been available; we just haven’t needed him. And for him to make a couple of big catches, that was a really big deal. And he did beautifully. It’s been an ongoing process of him proving himself on a regular basis. He’s a great practice player. He’s got all kinds of versatility and stuff. And he’s a real favorite around here.”
Indeed, teammate DK Metcalf on Tuesday raved about Johnson, calling him “probably one of the most energetic guys on the team. He’s always going to compete. … I like having him out there on the field.”
Metcalf recalled a play against the Jets when because of how New York lined up defensively, Johnson got stuck with an unexpected matchup having to block a defensive end weighing about 100 pounds more.
“He was caught in a bad position where he had to block a defensive end and he held his own,” Metcalf said. “That’s the type of player that he is — he’s going to fight his (butt) off every week.”
Johnson learned that trait from an early age from his father, Clester, who was a wingback at Nebraska from 1992-95, starting 11 games for the 1994 and 1995 teams that won back-to-back national titles
Cade Johnson went on to earn all-state honors in both football and basketball at the same high school his father attended, Bellevue (Nebraska) West High. But despite his lineage and accomplishments, he did not get a Division-I scholarship offer out of high school
One reason?
“I’ve always been undersized,” said Johnson, listed by the Seahawks at 5-10, 184 pounds.
A connection with his high school coach led to him walking on at FCS South Dakota State, where after a redshirt year, he became an immediate standout and then an All-American in 2019.
The following year SDSU’s fall season was canceled due to COVID-19. That left Johnson with some thinking to do.
He threw his name into the transfer portal and said FBS schools such as Minnesota, Texas, Florida State and Penn State pursued him aggressively. So did Washington State — he said then-Cougars coach Nick Rolovich called him a few times.
But schools wanted him to enroll and play immediately. Johnson wasn’t sure if that would help his pro prospects.
“It was tough to make a quick decision like that because I didn’t want to throw away all the stuff I had on film and just go somewhere and not know what they had for me,” he said.
Getting an invite to the Senior Bowl ultimately persuaded him to sit the season out and hope that a good Senior Bowl week would raise his draft stock. That appeared to have happened when Johnson was generally considered as one of the standouts of the week.
But with a chance to further impress scouts at SDSU’s Pro Day, he instead injured his groin on his first attempt at running the 40.
“I think that’s what really ended up hurting my stock and falling (out of the draft),” he said.
Which ultimately led to the call from Carroll and signing with the Seahawks — that Seattle only had three picks in that draft, he said, also helped sway him to Seattle.
His only appearance until two weeks ago, though, was a victory formation snap against the Giants on Oct. 30.
But with Lockett still ailing and Goodwin and Eskridge on IR heading into the Jets game, the team prepped Johnson for a major role.
He didn’t catch a pass on two targets against New York, and was left kicking himself over one pass that he felt he should have had.
He spent the week working on that play with Smith — the same play that Seattle then called on the first snap of the final drive of regulation with 56 seconds left and the scored tied at 16.
“First of all, I just wanted to catch it because me and Geno had a little of a miscommunication the week before on that play, so I wanted to make sure I perfected it,” Johnson said. “We worked on it and I got the tempo right.”
Now, the kid no Division-I school wanted out of high school, and no NFL team drafted out of college, could find himself with a significant role in a playoff game come Saturday.
“It’s surreal for me because I’ve just been dreaming about these moments since Seattle brought me in,” Johnson said. “And they’ve believed in me. And I know it’s taken a while, but this is like the vision they have for me. So I’m just going to ride it out for as long as I can.”