In the late hours of an early October morning in 2019, then ASU freshman Amiri Johnson arose from his slumber to take the short walk from his dorm room to the football facility across Rural Road. Unlike other players, Johnson was required to go to meetings with his nutritionist before morning lifts. Johnson was in the midst of a drastic bodily change, gaining massive amounts of “good weight” in a short period of time, but this particular morning, the freshman was exhausted.

As he sauntered around his dorm, still half-asleep, Johnson opened his mini-fridge and spotted salvation in the form of an iced coffee. The beverage which would give Johnson the extra boost needed to start his day belonged to his freshman roommate, starting left tackle LaDarius Henderson. Johnson awoke Henderson from his sleep to ask if he could have a sip of the coffee before leaving for meetings. Henderson responded promptly, declining Johnson access to the drink. Nonetheless, Johnson’s response, much to the drowsy dismay of his roommate, came in the form of a loud crack, followed by a gargantuan gulp of the caffeine-rich beverage. Johnson placed the remainder of Henderson’s coffee back in the fridge before embarking on his sunrise stroll down Sixth Street towards the football facilities.

Johnson’s superfluous sip of Henderson’s drink was just another installment of the playful relationship between the two, but for Johnson, the boost at the beginning of the day was something the freshman might have needed more than others.

When Johnson first enrolled at ASU in the fall of 2019, the freshman defensive end recruit weighed in at an extremely light 212 pounds. Standing at 6-foot-4, Johnson had the lengthy frame required for a shifty edge-rusher, but his lack of weight to fill his frame quickly became apparent to the young defensive lineman from the very first team practice.

“When I first got to campus, I don’t think I understood how bad it was that I was that weight,” Johnson recalled. “I really understood when we had our first practice…going up against a fifth-year senior, 315 pounds, strong and I’m just getting there, I’m (around) 215 (pounds). I was like, ‘Okay I really got to (start putting on weight).’”

Johnson was correct; he needed to bulk up and quickly. After his high school football career had concluded at Diamond Ranch High School in his hometown of Pomona, California, Johnson had been cutting weight in the spring to trim up for his senior prom.

However, Johnson’s initial struggles due to his lack of weight were identified and placed on the path to solution by ASU’s Recruiting Coordinator, Antonio Pierce, in a very similar fashion to the way Pierce had recruited Johnson just two years earlier.

The summer approaching Johnson’s senior season, Johnson was surprised to hear from Pierce as the two discussed the regional camps in which Johnson had been participated in. “I was surprised, I was like, ‘What?’ I had never talked to him before in person,” Johnson remarked.

Johnson and Pierce continued to communicate before the ASU linebackers coach, and now Associate Head Coach of the Sun Devils, came to Diamond Ranch to watch him practice. Pierce, along with former running backs coach John Simon called former defensive line coach Shawn Nua describing Johnson’s skills at practice. After their conversation ended, the trio of Sun Devil coaches, satisfied with what Johnson had displayed, offered the young defensive end on the spot. It was only Johnson’s second offer, the first coming from Boise State.

“(Visits & subsequent offers from Boise State and ASU) kind of validated everything that I was thinking about and all the hard work I had done to improve myself,” Johnson explained. “I felt like (ASU) believed in me long before a lot of people did, a lot of other schools. In the end, that was ultimately one of the reasons why I wanted to go there and kind of prove them right.”

The faith and belief in Johnson’s abilities by Division I programs such as that tandem of schools was something Johnson had never dreamed of. Initially enamored by old pictures of his father, Dustin, playing football in high school, Johnson began playing flag football at the age of seven, before moving on to Pop Warner and middle school football. However, the sport didn’t necessarily come as easily to Johnson as he had initially thought.

“All through Pop Warner when I played, I didn’t like (football),” Johnson chuckled. “I remember in Pop Warner I would only get like five plays a game, (the amount) they have to give to every kid. I was just playing because my dad played at that time.”

However, Johnson’s love for football would grow in conjunction with his physical development. As a freshman in high school, Johnson was the biggest player on the field. Due to his size, his reps increased on the freshmen team, but instead of playing exclusively at defensive end, he was also getting reps at offensive tackle. in his sophomore year, he took snaps playing tight end as well, before lining up solely at defensive end on the varsity squad for his remaining two years at Diamond Ranch..

After Johnson’s initial offers from Boise State and ASU, other schools began to take notice of the young pass rusher’s talent as well. Offers flooded in from a plethora of prestigious universities: from the Mountain West came schools such as Fresno State and Nevada, Pac-12 offers came from Oregon State and Utah, even schools like Brown and Navy came chiming in from the East Coast.

Despite the influx of offers, potentially the most meaningful occurrence of Johnson’s recruitment process came towards the end of his senior football season when his hometown school of USC presented Johnson with a scholarship, just a day before the December 2018 signing period. “(USC) has been my dream school since I was a little kid,” Johnson explained. “That was a stressful decision, and (I like to say) it was my first adult decision. I had to think about where I needed to be and where I wanted to be.”

During that decision, Johnson’s first visit to ASU came across his mind. His initial exposure to Arizona State came during the 2018 season opener against UTSA on an unofficial visit. Juggling a small cold throughout the weekend, Johnson sniffled his way to a blazing evening at Sun Devil Stadium to watch the contest against the Roadrunners. The pass-rushing prospect watched former Sun Devil N’Keal Harry torch the inferior UTSA defense, and Johnson enjoyed every moment.

Johnson, true to his loyalty to the people who first believed in him, took his only official visits to ASU on Nov. 10, for the contest against his other hometown school, UCLA, along with Boise State on Nov. 24 for their contest against Utah State. Johnson’s “adult decision” came on Dec. 6, when he officially committed to ASU, signing his letter of intent on Dec. 19th.

Fast forward to August of 2019, and the then-freshman Johnson was struggling to gain traction and meaningful practice reps on the defensive line due to his lack of weight for his position. Driven by his own mistake of cutting weight at the end of high school, but more so by the instruction of Pierce and ASU’s strength staff, led by Head of Sports Performance Joe Connolly, Johnson embarked on a rigorous body bulking regiment to increase his weight as the season progressed.

“It was kind of like an ‘eat-everything’ type of thing,” Johnson professed. “Coach Joe would tell me, ‘Go get a plate of this, a plate of that and you finish it and go back for another one.’ For me, I just felt like I wanted to get to where I was recruited to be at so I kind of had a goal and a vision for myself of what I needed to be.”

Johnson was instructed to eat three massive meals, consisting of multiple plates of food each time around, along with consistent snacks and a minimum of four 30-gram protein shakes throughout the course of a day. With the added pressure of playing defensive line undersized, Pierce took Johnson out of his position group and placed him with his position group at linebacker. Over the remainder of fall camp and for the first three weeks of the season, Johnson worked with that position group under the tutelage of Pierce.

“I really appreciate him, he never gave up on me, not once. He understood that I never played that position before and was extremely patient with me,” Johnson credited to Pierce. “I really appreciate him having the foresight to put me there as a learning experience and then eventually move me back to D-line.”

As Johnson navigated his weight-gaining regiment, he made his collegiate debut against Michigan State in East Lansing, getting his feet wet in the college football world against one of the most formidable foes the Sun Devils faced in 2019 and in a hostile environment to boot.

After returning to his position group for Week 4, Johnson would continue to gain weight, reaching 245 pounds by Oct. 21 of last year. The sturdier, now 6-foot-6 freshman defensive end would wrap up his freshman campaign seeing action against Utah and his hometown schools of UCLA and USC before redshirting the remainder of the year. Johnson, who played on a Pop Warner team called the Pasadena Trojans, described the experience of playing against USC as “a dream come true.”

Following his four appearances, Johnson felt he had more to give to the Sun Devils and wanted to contribute on defense as much as he could as the season progressed towards November, but ASU’s coaching staff had other plans in mind.

“(Opting to redshirt) was hard, but I trust this staff so much, I knew they had my best interest at heart, so I just trusted it and believed what they said,” Johnson explained in an interview with Devils Digest in February.

Even after the Sun Devils’ final appearance of the 2019 season in the El Paso Sun Bowl against Florida State, Johnson continued to train and amass weight on his growing frame, carrying his bulking regiment into 2020 as the Sun Devils inched towards spring practices.

On February 20, Johnson weighed 263 pounds, approximately 50 pounds heavier than when he first enrolled in late June of 2019. When COVID-19 interjected ASU Athletics in March and halted all activities, Johnson continued to train and bulk, undeterred by the effects of the global pandemic.

“It was really difficult to gain weight during the season, but I feel like the quarantine actually kind of helped me,” Johnson admitted.

“I knew I wanted to be a certain weight for the coming season, so it was nice to have time to experiment a little bit. I could eat and try to figure out what my real playing weight should be. I was able to eat and gain muscle, but it was hard being away from the facility because you don’t have the guidance of the coaches and strength staff.”

When ASU walkthroughs commenced post-quarantine in July, Johnson emerged at a thunderous 283 pounds. The once lanky pass-rusher had put on over 70 pounds in 13 months. Unaccustomed to playing at his new size, Johnson felt sluggish and struggled moving the same way he once had in the prior season. When Johnson’s new defensive line coach, Robert Rodriguez, noticed the difference in Johnson’s movement, responding with a playful remark to push Johnson in the right direction.

"I talked to Coach Rodriguez,” Johnson described. “He was telling me, ‘I don’t need another 3-technique (interior lineman)!’ I really appreciate him for that because if anything, he’s always going to be real with me. I think it was just my portions, I was so used to eating crazy food all the time, and I couldn’t do that anymore.”

Over the course of walkthroughs and post-quarantine training, Johnson trimmed down to a sleek, powerful 275 pounds. The new-framed freshman shifted his focus to bonding with his new position coach, Rodriguez, along with acclimating to a new defensive system led by Pierce and now Co-Defensive Coordinator Marvin Lewis, who was promoted from his position as Special Advisor to Sun Devil Football in 2019.

Beginning in February, Johnson’s relationship with his new position coach has gone beyond the redshirt freshman’s expectations. According to Johnson, Rodriguez, who was on the Minnesota Vikings staff as an assistant defensive line coach from 2015 to 2019, fits in well with the mission and ideals of the program and cares deeply for his players both on and off the field.

Most importantly to Johnson, though, is Rodriguez’s coaching approach, full of simple, but effective drills and techniques, along with a strong devotion to his players' best interests overall.

“I think anyone in the D-line will tell you the same thing, the way he does things is just different from anything we have all experienced before,” Johnson said of his position coach.

A defensive line is a position group where there is often the potential for one or two players to emerge as the unit's definitive threat. This case of isolation sometimes takes away the group dynamic of a defensive line unit that rushes together as the “first-responders” of every play.

Instead of investing in individuals to contribute to the group, Rodriguez’s image of the Sun Devil pass rush is different. “I feel like it’s more of a family environment in our D-line room,” Johnson explained. “We all do these things for each other; we rush as a group; we play as a group. The new culture (Rodriguez) has brought into our room has just been great.”

Johnson’s comfortability at ASU doesn’t just reside in his confidence in Rodriguez, rather it expands to his faith in the professional experience of his co-defensive coordinators, Pierce and Lewis. “They both really know what they are doing and talking about,” Johnson said regarding the pair.

With one Super Bowl ring each; Lewis as a defensive coordinator with the 2000 Baltimore Ravens and Pierce as a linebacker and captain with the 2007 New York Giants, the young edge threat has the utmost trust in their system at Arizona State, and even looks to the experienced duo for guidance during the racially tentative year that 2020 has been.

“They’ve been through it all, you can really ask them about anything about football or just life, they’re always happy to answer you,” Johnson mentioned. “I feel like me being a young black man, they’ve been through a lot of the things that I’ve been through and can really relate to me in that aspect as well.”

With his added weight and encouraging mindset due to the guidance of ASU’s coaches, along with a concrete start date for ASU’s first contest against USC on Nov. 7, Johnson feels more anxious than ever to begin his first season of full participation in maroon and gold. “I feel like we’re anxious; we’re hungry because, unlike the other teams, we’ve been up here working out for 15 weeks with no breaks and no days off,” Johnson said.”

In ASU’s new defensive system, Johnson will play a role on the edge in a four-man front, presumably alongside junior 3-technique interior lineman Jermayne Lole, junior nose tackle DJ Davidson and junior defensive end Tyler Johnson.

“Honestly, I love (the new role on the edge) because I feel like it fits my skill set a little better,” Johnson said. “I can be on an edge and use angles to my advantage. I feel like we are put in more positions to win our small matchups….I’ll be able to maximize my potential.”

When Johnson first arrived at ASU, his unproportionate height-to-weight ratio provided an immense challenge. The then-freshman, dramatically undersized for his position, was forced to undergo a drastic demonstration of bulking, all while juggling the tasks of a redshirt year, reps at a foreign position and the challenges of navigating his first year as a Division I student-athlete.

Johnson attacked the challenges of his freshman year in a similar fashion to the way he attacks offensive linemen and quarterbacks; with an unparalleled, powerful drive and a touch of speed and finesse.

Like a sudden rip-and-run move on an offensive tackle, the young defensive end shed the external pressure of his bulking regiment and maintained focus on his big-picture objective. However, the overarching goal this time wasn’t to sack the quarterback or cause a turnover; Johnson’s goal was to fill in pounds of muscle to find his optimum balance of size and speed.

Now at 275 pounds, Johnson is poised for a breakout redshirt freshman campaign in 2020. With only a seven-game schedule slated, the second-year edge threat has a brief window to show off the frame and body type he has cultivated for over 15 months.

When Johnson was first recruited by Boise State and ASU, he was surprised by the attention he received. A humble and loyal young man, Johnson returned the favor to his first two suitors by profusely thanking his recruiters for seeing a next-level talent in him that he had scarcely seen in himself and taking his only official visits to the pair of universities.

Since then, Johnson has changed dramatically physically and mentally, but his ideals of humility and loyalty are as permanently etched into his character as the gold-painted capital “A” on A Mountain in Tempe.

“I feel like last year; I really saw the bottom. There were times where I questioned (myself) like, ‘Man, am I really as good as I thought I was?’,” Johnson explained. “I feel like now that I’ve been there and seen the bottom, it feels so great, and I feel so blessed to finally be out of that (struggle), and I feel like the only way is up now. I just feel really grateful for it.”

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