From the challenges of growing up in one of the toughest areas on Detroit’s east side and losing his father early in life, Desjuan Johnson beamed with a heart and smile aglow amid the showering of gifts and proclamations during the recent Irrelevant Week festivities in Newport Beach.
“I’m blessed,” Johnson said on multiple occasions during the Lowsman Trophy Banquet at the Cannery Restaurant, where this year’s honoree, the last pick of the NFL draft at No. 259 by the Los Angeles Rams, was awarded the Lowsman Trophy with a backdrop of yachts on the waterfront and glitz and glamour throughout the facility.
“Desjuan has lived a hard life and for his family to help get him here has been nothing but love, because he comes from a city vacant of love,” his uncle, Roland Stegar, said atop a beautiful yacht overlooking Lido Village as part of a seven-member entourage, before his nephew made a grand entrance June 26 to be honored, roasted and toasted as the 48th Mr. Irrelevant.
“Desjuan has been provided with a lot of love to get him to this level, and you can see the love that has been poured into him, especially from his mother (Lacresia),” Stegar added.
Johnson’s father, Dion, a former defensive tackle at Kansas with dreams of playing in the NFL, was tragically killed in 2004 at age 23, when Desjuan was 4 years old. “Desjuan, I remember him saying, ‘So this means I don’t have a dad no more?’ It was so heartbreaking,” his mother said.
For his fifth birthday, his mother asked Desjuan what he wanted, and without hesitation Desjuan replied: “I want to play football.”
Johnson went from being chased by older boys on the hard-scrabble football fields in Detroit’s toughest neighborhood to becoming a defensive lineman at the University of Toledo who terrorized quarterbacks in the Mid-American Conference.
And now, upon signing a four-year contract with the Rams, Johnson could become the heir apparent to All-Pro defensive tackle Aaron…
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