Football Player of the Year, Offense | With a bruising style, Johnson carries Southeast back to postseason

BRADENTON

The details of the first time a coach decided to give Kevin Johnson a shot at running back still stand in his memory even if the specifics are a bit murky.

Johnson knows it came with the Manatee Mustangs during the waning moments of a blowout win against the South Shore Jr. Longhorns and didn't result in a touchdown. He doesn't remember the exact yardage, just that it was somewhere around 50 yards. He doesn't remember how close he came to scoring, either.

The most important detail, though, is that he was an offensive lineman rumbling half the length of the field. And he was in eighth grade.

"I didn't actually get to play like full running back until my freshman year in high school and that was like the best game ever," Johnson said. "I just fell in love with running back."

Four years later, the reluctant lineman became the leading rusher in Manatee County as a senior for Southeast with 1,342 yards and a signature bruising style. If opposing coaches didn't call him the best tailback they faced in 2015, they at least called him the toughest to tackle. The time spent in the trenches with the Mustangs became a blessing for Johnson and the Seminoles this year as they ended a two-year playoff drought by leaning on the workhorse back.

As a runner, Johnson's 230 regular-season carries were 35 more than any other player in the county. Throw in the 52 passes he attempted in his part-time role as a quarterback plus his one catch and Herald's All-Area Offensive Player of the Year accounted for 283 touches -- or 67.2 percent of the Noles' 421 offensive plays.

Johnson started at quarterback for five games and was Southeast's top running back in the other six. As good as the Seminoles' defense was this season their 5-5 regular-season record would have been unattainable without Johnson carrying the load on offense.

"He was the real deal for us," head coach John Warren said. "I don't love giving kids too much credit, but I don't know how to not give him credit."

Just like Johnson's first carry was several years in the making -- he started playing football at about 10 -- his first game under center was, too.

Before he got planted on the offensive line and at tight end for his eighth-grade year with Manatee, Johnson was expecting to get a shot at quarterback.

It was only once Jack Allison wound up on the same team as him that Johnson got plugged back into the trenches with Johnny Lang, the 2014 All-Area Offensive Player of the Year, still at running back. He briefly flirted with playing for the Tampa PAL Patriots before coaches assured him he'd get some touches as a tight end with Allison under center.

Four years later, Noles quarterback Joey Giardina was hurt and Warren plugged Johnson in as his signalcaller. Johnson threw for 100 yards, ran for 190 and scored two touchdowns, and went toe-to-toe with Brooksville Nature Coast Tech star running back Deshawn Smith, who broke Derrick Henry's state touchdowns record, in a narrow loss.

"I'll be doggone if he wasn't a freight train," Warren said. "We knew right away that we were going to have some fun tinkering with this."

Johnson went back to running back before taking over as the quarterback in Week 8 and playing the final four games, including Southeast's first-round playoff loss to Fort Myers Dunbar.

Even with a shoulder injury, Johnson threw 17 passes and ran the ball 25 times against Dunbar.

"With us, we have so many players," said Patrick Carnegie, who runs the Mustangs, "what it does is end up building that toughness in a kid like him who's probably a skill player at the next level."

He was too small to be a lineman full time - he's the shortest of his four brothers, including two whom are younger - and his uncle, Saul Gonzalez, always told him he should be a running back, so when Johnson joined the Seminoles he told coaches it was the position he played.

"We've got like 35 running backs," former head coach Paul Maechtle told him, "but let's see what you've got."

He was immediately effective and by his junior year was the Noles' top running back. When he played with varsity, he would ask the offensive line coaches about the specific blocking schemes on each play.

He had familiarity as an offensive lineman. He didn't want to just know where the holes were going to be. He wanted to know where each lineman was supposed to be.

His hallmark as a runner, though, was what he did after he burst through those holes.

"My uncle used to joke that I didn't like to be dirty," Johnson said. Even when he played Little League baseball as a prolific base-stealer, he preferred not to slide.

First contact was never enough to bring him down. Despite logging significantly more carries than Southeast attempted passes and have his numbers bogged down by sacks, Johnson still averaged 5.8 yards per carry.

He's still awaiting his scoore from his first shot at the SAT to get a sense of what next year could hold, but he does have interest from Florida International and several smaller schools. A few weeks ago, Duke visited campus and Warren showed the coaches a bit of Johnson's film. The Blue Devils were stunned there isn't more buzz around the back.

Like the way he runs, Johnson's best opportunities to shine have always come late. Even after a monster senior season, there are reasons to believe bigger moments are still coming.

"The offensive line creates the initial hole, but when the linebacker gets to you and the (defensive back) gets to you, and you still don't go down that's how you judge a man's spirit," Warren said. "It's unfortunate we had to put him at quarterback because we capped him a little bit."

This story was originally published December 24, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Football Player of the Year, Offense | With a bruising style, Johnson carries Southeast back to postseason ."