Nick Moyle June 5, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
AUSTIN — The walls in Roschon Johnson’s room were perpetually plastered with handwritten notes, strict goals set to keep him moving forward. They were constant reminders of what needed to be done and what laid ahead.
One of those pinned cards always held a little more meaning, the one that said he’d one day become a Texas Longhorn.
“That was just a goal of his,” said Schwanna Johnson, Roschon’s mother. “Before they even recruited him, he had his eyes set on Texas.
“He’s very focused. Once he has made up his mind, he just goes forward from there. So even as the other colleges were recruiting him, I mean he did take a look at them because he wanted to get a feel for what else was out there, but his mind never strayed from wanting to go to UT.”
Texas extended Johnson a scholarship offer Jan. 25, 2017. The 6-2 quarterback committed that year on July 21 at an on-campus recruiting event, becoming the first member of the Longhorns’ 2019 class.
Even Schwanna was somewhat surprised her youngest son decided to end the recruiting process before even taking a snap as a junior. But in Johnson’s mind, there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
That allowed Johnson to tune out the recruiting noise over his final two record-breaking seasons at Port Neches-Groves. Fully focused, he finished as the school’s all-time leading passer with 7,710 yards and second all-time leading rusher with 4,900 yards.
Johnson graduated early as an All-American and consensus four-star prospect. He was ranked by 247Sports as the No. 6 dual-threat quarterback in the nation and No. 29 prospect in Texas by 247Sports.
It was the culmination of years and years of toiling — with his father, Ronald, two older brothers, Dorian and Jeremiah, and himself.
“My dad instilled in me, if you’re going to do something be the best at it,” Johnson said.
From as young as 8 years old, Johnson would spend hours pushing sleds up and down a football field with Ronald, a physical commitment that transformed him into something of a burgeoning big-hit menace. Battling against two bigger brothers further sharpened that resolve.
“Of course, he looked up to his older brothers,” Schwanna said. “But to keep up with them you have to push a little harder, tackle them a little bit harder than you would somebody else your own size and age.”
It became a problem — not for Johnson, but those poor, tiny souls who came across his path.
There was something of an outcry during his youth football days. Johnson, who moved all over the field, played with such raw, atypical power that his hits almost looked dirty.
They weren’t, just hard. Really hard.
“There was a game or two where he just tackled a couple of kids pretty hard,” Schwanna said. “The other kids didn’t want to play anymore after that. Then the parents and other coaches kind of felt a certain way. But he was just doing what he knew. He didn’t tackle to harm anyone, it was just his style. He played hard.”
Johnson’s destiny was under center, though. And his presence on the Longhorns’ roster this season has become more important than anyone initially expected.
The transfers of ever-steady Shane Buechele to SMU and former four-star signee Cameron Rising to Utah left Texas with three scholarship quarterbacks: junior Sam Ehlinger, redshirt freshman Casey Thompson and Johnson.
Johnson likely won’t see any game action this season unless something calamitous happens to both Ehlinger and Thompson. But his presence, especially after Thompson weighed an offseason transfer, is reassuring both for the present and the future of Texas football.
“He’s a tremendous leader,” Texas coach Tom Herman said. “(PNG) coach Brandon Faircloth told me a story of a game. They won, but I think Roschon had missed two out routes or something like that.
“Coach Faircloth comes in Saturday morning very early to grade the film. He looks out on the field, and there was Roschon by himself throwing that exact same out route into a net. I think he did it a hundred times. Just kind of speaks to the perfectionist, the competitor that he is.”
Johnson this spring experienced the typical pains of an early enrollee freshman quarterback experienced a new level of football for the first time.
The defense looks like a blur. The playbook is thicker and more complex. The faces are unfamiliar.
“I think Roschon knows that he’s not ready right now,” Herman said. “And that’s OK, you’re not supposed to be after 15 practices of college football. So I don’t think that’s a huge concern of ours. I think he understands the need to grow in this offense.”
There’s little doubt Johnson, a high-school honor roll student who sailed through this past semester with three A’s and one B, will eventually pick up the complexities of the college game. Surely, that task is among the many new goal cards now stuck to his walls.
