Oregon wasn’t ever supposed to happen for Juwan Johnson.
Coming out of Glassboro High School in New Jersey, he received 15 Division I scholarship offers. Not a single one was from a school west of the Mississippi River. He eventually committed to Penn State as a highly rated recruit and was expected to be a star on a team, and in a conference, full of them.
But that’s not how it went.
However unfair it may have been, he became more synonymous with dropped passes than touchdown catches.
Five years later, on New Year’s Day 2020 on the West Coast, he capped a roller coaster of a collegiate career by making the game-clinching play that won Oregon the Rose Bowl.
“Throughout this whole year, it’s been tough, but it’s been adventurous and it’s been awesome,” Johnson said. “All I can do is smile.”
When he decided to transfer to Oregon from Penn State for his last year, he was walking into a great unknown. Current Ducks head coach Mario Cristobal was a member of the coaching staff at Alabama that initially recruited Johnson in 2014. But beyond his slight familiarity with Cristobal, he didn’t know much at all about the Oregon program — one that had gone just 20-17 the previous three seasons.
“Coming in here, I really didn’t know,” Johnson said. “I knew Coach Cristobal from high school, so I didn’t know what kind of personality or characteristics he was gonna bring. I came here with blind faith, honestly.”
When he arrived in Eugene in the fall of 2019, everything was different. Quite frankly, football was the easy part. Things that initially seemed insignificant, like communicating across three time zones, were among the most difficult.
“It’s different for my mother and my people back on the East Coast,” Johnson said. “I’ve gotta be considerate of their time as well. I can’t be texting them at 9 at night because it’s 12 o’clock there, so it’s definitely different. I call my mom at 8 o’clock now and she’s up at 11 waiting for my call.”
And around that time, the football part was going just as planned. He arrived on campus as a transfer from a big-time program with high expectations, and was ready to make an immediate impact on a receiving corps that was inexperienced and decimated by injuries. He looked to be, on paper, the potential No. 1 target for quarterback Justin Herbert.
Instead, when the Ducks opened their season in primetime in front of 60,000 people at AT&T Stadium, Johnson was roaming the sidelines in warmups and glasses. He did the same for the next three weeks, and what was initially seen as a minor injury had suddenly taken away a quarter of his final season.
Talk began to swirl that he wasn’t ever going to suit up for the Ducks, that he was just another failed transfer. Then, a few weeks later, he caught three touchdowns in a blowout win against USC and his presence was announced to the college football world on national television. Three months after that and 14 miles across town, Johnson converted the final first down of Oregon’s season — and the final one of his career. It was the last one either of them needed.
At that moment, his entire journey was validated. An injury, three time zones, countless critics— all of it. And while none of this was ever planned, it was his unique experience as an Oregon Duck, and he wouldn’t trade that for anything.
“I won’t regret anything about it. It’s been a pleasure being here, and it’s something I won’t ever forget.”