A former Penn State tight end is likely done for the season, per his head coach.
Friday, Giants HC Brian Daboll announced that rookie TE Theo Johnson is probably out for the year after suffering a foot injury during New York’s Thanksgiving Day game against the Cowboys in Dallas.
Coach Brian Daboll added the promising rookie TE Theo Johnson is also likely done for the season with a foot injury. https://t.co/GHgnNxnL8S
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) November 29, 2024
Johnson had perhaps the best game of his young career against the Cowboys.
He ended the day catching all five of his targets for a career-best 54 yards. On the season, Johnson has 29 catches for 331 yards and a score, which he picked up Nov. 3 against Washington for his first NFL TD.
WHAT JOHNSON ACCOMPLISHED AT PENN STATE
Penn State alum Theo Johnson attend the blue white game ahead of the NFL draft.
Tyler Warren is currently having maybe the best season a Penn State tight end has ever had but last season, Johnson was Penn State’s No. 1 TE.
Johnson didn’t put up monster numbers at Penn State.
He never had more than 341 yards and a season and never scored more than seven touchdowns.
Perhaps Johnson would have put up better numbers at a school that didn’t have as strong of a reputation for churning out NFL-caliber tight ends.
One of those tight ends, Pat Freiermuth, was at Penn State when Johnson started his college football career in 2020.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.Penn State also had Brenton Strange, a man who’s a year older than Johnson and wound up being a second-round pick of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2022. Zach Kuntz was a top-five prep TE in the country when Penn State signed him. He ended up transferring to Old Dominion. Kuntz, too, is now in the NFL with the Jets.
But that crowded room didn’t deter Johnson from picking PSU over schools such as Georgia, Iowa and Michigan.
It drove him to do it.
“That was a huge reason why I chose Penn State as a young high school kid,” Johnson told reporters at his NFL Combine presser in February. “Just looking at the lineage of tight ends that have come out of Penn State. It excited me to continue that tradition. But also to leave my own mark. Moving forward in the future. I think I’ve done that, and I’m looking forward to the kids that are coming after me. We have a lot of really young, good talent. So I think that tradition’s going to continue on for a long time.”
ANOTHER GRONK?
One of the ultimate honors for any tight end is to be mentioned in the same breath as Rob Gronkowski.
Daboll, who was Gronk’s tight end coach in New England from 2013-16, sees some “Gronk” in the rookie (we’re talking strictly on the field, to be clear).
“There’s countless times where we’ll be in the middle of a meeting and he’ll be like, ‘Theo, Dabs wants to see you,’” Johnson told Art Stapleton of NorthJersey.com during training camp. “Pulls me out of the meeting and I’m like, ‘What could this possibly be about?’
“And then he’s got up a clip of Gronk just running somebody over, catching a back shoulder, and he’s like, ‘This is what we expect from you.’ I can tell he puts a lot of intentional eye into the tight end position … I think it goes to show how he feels about me and what he thinks I’m capable of.”
Penn State takes on Maryland Saturday for its regular-season finale at Beaver Stadium. Kickoff is scheduled for 3:30 on the Big Ten Network.
