They Don’t Come Much Cooler Than Chris Johnson

It was supposed to be a day to remember Chris Johnson, and it still can be. The NFL's all-time single-season yards leader was scheduled to be honored today by the Tennessee Titans, for whom he starred from 2008–2013, at halftime of their game against the New York Jets, for whom he played in 2014. But the Titans announced Friday that Johnson won't be able to travel to Nashville to be inducted into the team's Ring of Honor, and the ceremony will be postponed to a later date. I hope it does happen later. Johnson's appearance was canceled due to "unforeseen circumstances," and it's hard not to assume that's health-related. Johnson, 40, revealed in June on Good Morning America that he's been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a degenerative neurological disorder that is invariably fatal. It is cruel and it works quickly: The average time between onset and death is between two and four years. Johnson said he first noticed weakness in one hand in March 2025, and by the time of his GMA interview just 15 months later, he required a computerized speech-generating device that he controls with his eye movements. A few days ago, Johnson published "A Letter to My Kids" in The Players' Tribune; it felt like a goodbye. "How can a man just be perfectly healthy one day," he wrote, "running around with his kids in the yard, and then the next, your hand starts getting weak, and it just travels throughout your whole body until you can’t talk anymore?"

Read it at Defector ↗

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