text: 'Smile, smile, smile': Aunt who raised Browns' D'Ernest Johnson still running alongside a Pop Warner fence
  Marla Ridenour
  BEREA — D’Ernest Johnson’s mother, aunt, brother, girlfriend and agent were at FirstEnergy Stadium on Oct. 21, when Johnson made his first NFL start on “Thursday Night Football.”
  In Immokalee, Florida, his aunt Undreas Harrison was “screaming and hollering” in front of the television. Watching him rush for 146 yards and a touchdown and earn a game ball against the Denver Broncos, she experienced a flashback.
  Harrison recalled one of Johnson's early games in Pop Warner, when she ran the length of the field with him, she outside the fence yelling, “‘Go! Go!’”
  Johnson lived with Harrison for 15 years, starting when he was 3. Her voice filled with pride when she discussed his fight to reach the NFL in a phone interview Thursday. She was appreciative to hear that so many of his teammates, touched by his journey, have embraced him, with Nick Chubb calling him “lovable.”
  Parts of that journey — like when Johnson direct messaged all the teams in the Alliance of American Football in 2018 asking if they wanted to see his highlight video — Harrison learned about after the fact. She didn’t hear many details about the six months he spent fishing for mahi-mahi off the coast of Key West, Florida except for his occasional comment about how tired he was.
  By then, the University of South Florida product had left Immokalee for Gainesville, where Harrison said Johnson was providing for his now 6-year-old son D’Ernest Jr., “D.J.” to her.
  When Harrison learned Johnson, now 25, was going to be a father, she said she wasn’t thrilled and told him, “’If you’re man enough to get it, you better be man enough to take care of it.’”
  “He knew how I raised him. Him and his brother, I’m so proud that they’re stepping up to the plate and doing that, taking care of their kids,” she said. Johnson and his girlfriend Jasmin Brown now have a baby daughter, shown in the most recent episode of “Building the Browns.”
  But no matter what job Johnson held, nothing obscured his relentless drive to continue his career.
  “D’Ernest was tenacious about football,” Harrison said of Johnson as a child. “Football was like in his DNA. He loved football, loved football, loved it.
  “When he was 4 or 5 when they put him in pads, a lot of them used to be out there just messing around, but he was always focused. A lot of people used to come up to me and say, ‘He’s the best one on the team’ because he played defense and offense.”
  After toiling on special teams for two years, Johnson has become a valued member of the Browns in his third year in Cleveland. As the Browns (5-5) host the Detroit Lions (0-8-1) Sunday, Johnson may again be a big part of the running attack behind starter Chubb, activated off the reserve/COVID-19 list Friday with rookie Demetric Felton. Kareem Hunt, the other half of the Browns 1-2 punch, remains on injured reserve.
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  In the 17-14 victory over the Broncos, the Browns were without Chubb and Hunt, both out with calf injuries. In Sunday’s 45-7 loss at New England, nearly the entire running back room — Chubb, Felton and John Kelly — landed on the reserve/COVID-19 list. Johnson, baffled and thankful he did not test positive for the virus, was the lone bright spot, rushing 19 times for 99 yards and leading the Browns in receiving with seven catches for 58 yards.
  He showed the Browns his mettle with 2:42 remaining and his team behind by 38 points, catching a Case Keenum pass out of the backfield and running for 18 yards.
  “He finished on the sideline late in the fourth quarter where he could have easily stepped out of bounds but he's like ‘No, I'm going to show that I can finish this game,’” Browns left guard Joel Bitionio said Thursday. “That's all you want, man. I think he has the potential. He's shown people that he can play running back in this league and that's huge for him.”
  Offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt was just as impressed with the seemingly meaningless reception by Johnson.
  “He had two defenders coming in on him. Nine out of 10 backs in this league would have stepped out of bounds, and he put his shoulder down,” Van Pelt said Thursday. “This guy loves football, and I love that he is in our room.”
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  Harrison helped launch that dream, signing up Johnson for Pop Warner and driving him to his practices and games.
  She took in Johnson and his older brother Tshumbi when D’Ernest was 3 and Tshumbi 4. Their mother, Harrison’s niece, was young and wanted a more stable life for her sons. Harrison, 53, who will finish her 26th year working in the cafeteria for Collier County Public Schools in 2022, eventually needed help caring for her sickly mother, and even as teenagers the boys were willing.
  Immokalee is a football hotbed, Harrison said. Sports runs deep in the family and not just on the male side. Harrison played volleyball, basketball, and softball, and Johnson’s grandmother ran track. D’Ernest and Tshumbi made the varsity football team as high school freshmen.
  At South Florida, Harrison said then-coach Willie Taggart, now at Florida Atlantic University, used to call Johnson “Junkyard Dog.”
  “He wanted to win. No matter what position coach Taggart put him at, he’d go in and do what he had to do,” she said.
  After Johnson left college, Harrison knew Johnson had a few dark days as he tried to break into the league.
  “He went through a rough time, I talked to him and he was depressed, he thought he wasn’t going to make it there,” Harrison said. “I said, ‘Don’t give up on your dream.’”
  When she found out he wrote all of the coaches before he latched on with the AAF’s Orlando franchise in the now-defunct league, Harrison said she told him, “You weren’t playing about that.’”
  Getting that chance took more than the messages as none in the AAF initially answered.
  “I actually got the [general manager’s] number from one of my college teammates and college coach,” Johnson said on Oct. 28. “They gave me the number and I kept calling every day. Every single day I kept calling until they finally said, ‘We’re going to bring you in for a tryout.’”
  When he got a tryout with the Browns in 2019, he was headed to a yoga class with his girlfriend and the person on the phone told him he had about four hours to catch a plane. He threw some things in a bag and rushed to the airport.
  Harrison has been watching most of this from afar. She saw Johnson play once in Cleveland his rookie year. The family also attended Browns' preseason games in Tampa in 2019 and in Jacksonville this year.
  With Johnson thrust to the forefront this season, Harrison thought back to the day Johnson signed on May 16, 2019.
  “When we FaceTimed he said, ‘Oh, my God, it seems so unreal.’ But I said, ‘You did it, D’Ernest. You’re in the NFL,’” Harrison said.
  “That dream had been such a long time. He’s so happy. Even as a kid, he was always smiling. Smile, smile, smile.”
  Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/browns. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MRidenourABJ.
  Lions at Browns
  Time: 1 p.m. Sunday
  TV: FOX