Giants second-year tight end Theo Johnson believes he’s coming into his own.
He started feeling that way in 2024 while entering the stretch run of his rookie campaign, only to be robbed of his final five games due to a foot injury that required surgery.
“I felt it coming on the more comfortable I got,” Johnson said on the Giants Huddle podcast. “Just feeling what it’s like to be in my groove, like now having an idea, like I’ve got this many games under my belt, this is what it’s gotta look like. Just as it was like, man, I could really finish on a high note this year, the injury happened, which was super discouraging. But encouraging at the same time, because it was like, now I know I’m going to have a full offseason to kind of prepare and figure things out. I definitely felt like I was catching on at the right time. Unfortunately, the injury kind of put a hold on that.”
Johnson, selected in the fourth-round of the 2024 draft, came on slowly last season.
He produced only three catches for 37 yards over his first four games, but then he turned a corner. Outside of a Week 7 goose egg on the stat sheet, Johnson delivered at least 30 receiving yards and three receptions in every game he played beyond September, and at the time of his Week 11 injury had amassed 331 yards and a touchdown on 29 catches.
While those numbers may be dwarfed by the rookie outputs of the Lions’ Sam LaPorta in 2023 and the Raiders’ Brock Bowers last season, those two record-breaking seasons are anomalies at the position.
Johnson represented himself quite well, and with his lessons learned is set to make a bigger impact in 2025.
“Huge, huge difference,” he said when asked to describe himself heading into Year 2 compared to last season. “I know what it’s like to be a professional football player now. I was learning as I went week by week [as a rookie].”