49ers great, Hall of Famer Jimmy Johnson dies at age of 86

Former San Francisco 49ers great Jimmy Johnson, known as “the lonesome cornerback” because opponents rarely threw in his direction, died at age 86. The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced his death Thursday.

Johnson grew up in the Fresno County town of Kingsburg, Calif., was a football and track star at UCLA and was so beloved by the 49ers they retired his number, 37, a year after he played his last snap in 1976.

He played 16 NFL seasons, all of them with the 49ers. He missed only 12 games in that span, an amazing feat for someone with an every-down role on defense until he was 38 years old. He was named to five Pro Bowls, won the Pro Football Writers’ George Halas Award for courageous play in 1971 and was a two-time winner of the Len Eshmont Award, the 49ers’ highest honor and one voted on by the players. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1994.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame is saddened to share the news that the Class of 1994’s Jimmy Johnson has passed away at age 86. His 47 career interceptions were the most ever for the 49ers until Ronnie Lott broke that mark in 1989. Lott grew up an NFL superfan, loved all of the greats of the 1960s and early 1970s and always had a special admiration for Johnson.

“A great person,” Lott said of Johnson in 2022.

Despite his accolades, Johnson wasn’t the most famous athlete in his family. His older brother, Rafer, was the first Black captain of a U.S. Olympic team. He carried the U.S. flag into Rome’s Olympic Stadium in 1960 and won a gold medal in the decathlon.

Rafer didn’t compete after his decathlon gold, instead becoming a goodwill ambassador and taking a leadership role with the Special Olympics. He became close to the Kennedy family and was with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy the night the presidential candidate was fatally shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Rafer, former NFL star Rosey Grier and journalist George Plimpton helped subdue the assassin movements after the shots were fired.

Rafer passed away in 2020 at age 86.

“I’ve gotten more benefit from being Rafer’s brother than I can begin to tell you,” Johnson told The Fresno Bee in 1994. “He’s been my shining light, the person that I’ve looked up to. Most people, if they want an autograph of their sports hero, have to send off somewhere. I had my hero living with me.”

Rafer and Jimmy attended UCLA where Rafer dominated in the decathlon and Jimmy specialized in the 110-meter hurdles and the long jump. He was the NCAA champion in the high hurdles in 1960 and he once posted a 25-foot jump. All the while, Jimmy was a two-way player at UCLA, lining up at wingback and defensive back.

The 49ers made him the first of three first-round picks in 1961, selecting Johnson with the sixth pick and then taking receiver Bernie Casey and quarterback Billy Kilmer, who also played at UCLA, later in the round. Noting Johnson’s speed and leaping ability, the 49ers’ first thought was to make him a receiver.

He finished the 1962 season as the team’s second-leading pass catcher and had an impressive 18.4-yard per-catch average. His 80-yard touchdown on a throw from John Brodie against the Bears that season was the deciding score in the 49ers’ win and stood for a decade as the franchise’s longest-scoring reception.

In 1964, however, injuries had depleted the 49ers’ secondary and Johnson was moved to left cornerback. He became a fixture there until he retired. Dick Nolan, a defensive specialist and the 49ers’ head coach from 1968 to 1975, said Johnson was the greatest defensive back he’d ever coached. Johnson also served as the players’ spokesman and Nolan knew that if Johnson came to him with a request it was serious.

The two had a good relationship. Before he passed in 2007, Nolan recalled the time Johnson entered his office to negotiate his contract. To gain a psychological advantage, the cornerback sat across from the head coach wearing dark sunglasses. The famously taciturn Nolan merely reached into his desk, put on his own pair of sunglasses and stared back until Johnson couldn’t take it anymore and burst out laughing.

Johnson was a perennial Hall of Fame finalist during the 1980s but had to wait until 1994 to get in. He may have suffered from lack of exposure during his playing days. For one, the 49ers never won a championship during his tenure, always seeming to come up short to the hated Dallas Cowboys.

And while his 47 career interceptions were impressive, they didn’t rank in the top 30 on the all-time list even in 1994.

Players from his era, however, noted there was a reason Johnson’s statistics weren’t gaudier: Quarterbacks were scared to throw in his direction. He played a physical form of press coverage and was one of the first so-called “shut-down” cornerbacks. Opponents like Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath simply avoided him.

“Why would I want to throw a pass somewhere when I only had a 50-50 chance of completing it?” Namath told the San Jose Mercury News in 1994.

Johnson was 55 when he learned he would finally be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

“I’m still in a state of disbelief,” he told The Fresno Bee in 1994. “Nothing in my athletic career has come easy. You look at the dream, you look at the rainbow, and you hope you can get to that pot of gold. I didn’t believe it until I received the phone call.”