From 2008 to 2013, the Tennessee Titans didn’t have to worry about their ground attack. They had Chris ‘CJ2K’ Johnson in the backfield, who rushed for nearly 8,000 yards for the franchise. The Titans had named him in their class of 2026 Ring of Honor to memorialize his efforts. However, he and his family are no longer able to do so.
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The Titans announced that Johnson, who has ALS, will not be able to travel to Nissan Stadium to be part of that ceremony.
“Due to unforeseen circumstances, Chris Johnson and his family are no longer able to travel to Nashville for this Sunday’s game,” the Titans said in a statement. “Knowing how much he and his family desire to be in person at Nissan Stadium for his induction into the Titans Ring of Honor, we will postpone the official induction ceremony and look forward to celebrating the moment with them at a future date.”
“Our thoughts, along with those of Titans fans everywhere, continue to be with Chris and his wife, Brittany.”
Johnson first spoke publicly about his ALS diagnosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in June, when he joined Michael Strahan on Good Morning America to share what he had been going through. From once torching the ground with his legs, the disease now has Johnson restricted to a wheelchair. He now communicates using a speech-generating device controlled by his eye movements.
Just this Thursday, Johnson published an open letter to his four children, Honey Buns, CJ, Kaden and Lee, in The Players’ Tribune, reflecting on the difficult conversations he has had with them since his diagnosis and what the disease has meant for their family.
“ALS has forced me to realize that who I am is so much bigger than what my body can do,” Johnson wrote. “My value is in the man that I am, the person I wake up and choose to be every day.”
Johnson was one of the most explosive running backs of his era. Drafted by Tennessee in the first round out of East Carolina in 2008, he broke out the following season with 2,006 rushing yards, still the seventh-highest single-season total in NFL history, and set the league record for yards from scrimmage in a season.
That 2009 season brought Johnson the AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year award and made “CJ2K” a name that followed him for the rest of his career. He went on to make three Pro Bowls over 10 NFL seasons with the Titans, New York Jets, and Arizona Cardinals. Tennessee brought him back for a one-day contract, allowing Johnson to officially retire with the franchise.
There are many memorable plays that make Johnson a true Titan. His first big play came in his rookie season against the Kansas City Chiefs, where he rushed for a 66-yard touchdown, extending what was only a narrow three-point lead over the opponents. Perhaps his best play was the 91-yard touchdown against the Houston Texans, which the Titans unfortunately lost.
Now, with ALS, one question has started to follow him too: could football have played a role? Johnson addressed that directly in his Players’ Tribune letter.
“I’ve seen a lot of neurologists at this point and been to basically every major ALS clinic in the country, and in my experience, as soon as you say you played football it’s like, ‘Ahh, OK,'” Johnson wrote. “I read one study, and from my understanding, it found that former NFL players were nearly four times as likely to develop and pass away from ALS compared with the U.S. male population overall. That was a shock.”
He has also spoken about what makes his diagnosis particularly difficult to understand. He explained during his GMA interview:
“There’s no history of ALS in my family,” Johnson said. “My doctors believe my case is what’s called sporadic ALS, which is actually how the vast majority of ALS cases happen. That’s one of the reasons this disease can be so shocking. It can happen to someone who never expected it.”
Since the announcement, several former and current players have taken the ice bucket challenge to support Johnson. The list includes Marshawn Lynch, Von Miller, Deion Sanders, and many more.
That’s part of why Johnson has said he wanted to go public in the first place, hoping his story pushes more people to take early symptoms seriously and get checked sooner rather than later, given how fast the disease can move once it starts. The Ring of Honor moment will happen eventually. For now, the Titans are giving Johnson and his family exactly what they’ve asked for: time, and space to focus on what matters most.