Philadelphia Eagles: Watch Lane Johnson dunk on the haters

Lane Johnson is a big you know what dude.

He’s been in the NFL for eight years, started all 99 games he’s appeared in, and, for a time, was the highest-paid right tackle in the NFL, at least until Trent Brown signed a massive contract with the Raiders during the spring of 2019.

Pro Bowl appearances? Johnson has three. All-Pro honors? Check as well, a single selection to the team in 2017.

Johnson also just so happens to be one of only six offensive tackles to start in a Super Bowl for the Philadelphia Eagles, and one of only two alongside Detroit Lions guard Halapoulivaati Vaitai to actually earn a ring for his efforts.

And yet, there’s a smallish but vocal segment of the Eagles’ fanbase that is somehow over Johnson and would like to move on from the 31-year-old Groveton Texas native in favor of giving both Andre Dillard and Jordan Mailata a chance to start long-term.

Their hypothesis is simple: Johnson isn’t getting any younger and has a long injury track record. Why watch his career slowly spiral downward when he could surely fetch a decent return in draft and/or player compensation?

Is that train of thought off base? Eh, only sort of. Johnson has missed games in all but two of his eight professional seasons, including seven in 2020, and has become more and more banged up with each passing season under Doug Pederson. If some contender swooped in with a godfather offer for Johnson’s services, say a first-round pick or a really good young player in the middle of his rookie contract, maybe rolling with a 25 and 24-year-old as the team’s long-term bookends makes sense.

But to call Johnson washed or over the hill? Yeah, that doesn’t make a ton of sense. Why? Well, have you seen the man dunk? No? Well, read on, my friends, for you are about to.

Johnson remains the Philadelphia Eagles’ most athletic player pound for pound.

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If Lane Johnson opted to transition from Kilgore College quarterback to power forward instead of offensive tackle, he might not have been the fourth overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft.

Sure, he’s quick, hyper-athletic – boasting one of the fastest 40 times by an offensive lineman in NFL Draft Combine history – and at 6-foot-6, is taller than Zion Williamson, but can he shoot? Can he flop? Can he even set screens?

I frankly don’t have an answer for ya, but what I do know is that Johnson can absolutely, truly, 100 percent dunk a basketball with the sort of forceful gusto that is typically reserved for professionals.

Don’t believe me? Fortunately, you don’t have to. As older folks often say, a picture is worth a thousand words, but a video, even a four-second one posted to Twitter with the caption #processing, is priceless.

Boom, all cotton. To paraphrase the great Marc Zumoff, “Yes!!!”

Now sure, technically, that isn’t the most impressive dunk you’ll see this week. Johnson’s not-so-impressive jump is masked by him bending his legs, and he just barely gets the ball into the hoop despite having 35.28-inch arms. Matisse Thybulle has turned in better dunks, as has Tyrese Maxey, and pretty much every other member of the Sixers over the 2020-21 season, but riddle me this, how many of those players weigh in at over 300 pounds? No one on the Sixers, and only one player to my knowledge – Boban Marjanović – tips the scales to that degree and is still able to get the ball into the hoop.

What, however, can we infer about Johnson from this video? Well, that his ankle is fully recovered from his postseason surgery and that he hasn’t lost any of the explosiveness that made Howie Roseman fall in love with him a near-decade ago and has kept Johnson in the starting five in every game he’s appeared in.

Eventually, the post-Lane Johnson-era of Philadelphia Eagles football will come to the City of Brotherly Love just like the post-Jon Runyan-era began in 2008, and the post-Jason Peters-era is set to follow it up in 2021. If that happens in 2021 because a trade offer comes in that’s too good to be true, then so be it, but don’t put the pride of Oklahoma out to pasture just yet, as it looks like here’s still plenty of tread left on his tires.