When Arizona Cardinals first-round draft pick Paris Johnson showed up to rookie minicamp wearing a Pat Tillman jersey, the collective response from the public was, “this guy gets it.”
That was the exact caption the Cardinals’ social media team put on the tweet with Johnson in the jersey.
this guy gets it.@ParisJohnsonJr with the Pat Tillman tribute 👏 pic.twitter.com/pooqg4QJon
— Arizona Cardinals (@AZCardinals) May 11, 2023
He didn’t plan on wearing the jersey to rookie camp. It just happened that way, he told reporters on Friday after the first day of practice.
He said that, after he was drafted and was flown out to Arizona to be introduced to the media, on the flight back home, he thought, “I’ve got to get some Arizona stuff.”
He knew he would get a lot of team-issued gear, so he went jersey shopping.
He didn’t buy one of his own, thinking, “If I were go around wearing my own jersey, that looks cheesy.”
“I was scrolling and I saw the Pat Tillman jersey and I was, ‘oh snap,'” he said. “Then I saw the legacy one, the original from 2000 and I was, ‘okay, that’s the one.”
Plus, it was on sale.
The Tillman jersey had a little extra meaning. His father was a teammate and played safety with Tillman in 1999 when he was drafted by the Cardinals. His mother met Tillman.
When Johnson was getting ready to come out for rookie camp, he had already shipped a lot of his things and had to decide what to wear. Almost like a sign, thee jersey was in the closet facing Johnson, and he knew that is what he needed to wear.
Johnson shared an interesting fact.
“He’s actually the only jersey I have,” he said. “I’ve never owned a jersey with anybody else’s name on it.”
Johnson doesn’t have basketball jerseys or other football jerseys. He only recently got his own Ohio State Jersey.
It’s a cool story and also a good way to get connected with hard-core Cardinals fans.
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