Nazeeh
Johnson.
Nazeeh
Johnson.
Marshall
"An unranked Marshall walk-on who ran 4.38 with a 42-inch vertical, went third-to-last in the draft, and collected two Super Bowl rings plus a season of real starts in Kansas City."Pre-draft read
A 5-10 1/4, 199-pound defensive back with genuinely elite explosion numbers: a 4.38 forty, a 42-inch vertical and a 10-foot-9 broad jump at his pro day. That speed and lower-body power is why a Conference USA walk-on was drafted at all.
He played deep safety and in the box at Marshall and covers ground in a hurry, arriving with force. He is a willing tackler who racked up more than 300 career stops. The limits are length and coverage polish: 30 3/8-inch arms and a five-foot-eleven wingspan are short for a cornerback, and he plays with more athleticism than anticipation, reacting to routes rather than reading them. He projects as a special teams demon first and a rotational defender second.
A single-high defense that keeps him near the line as a box safety and lets his speed close downhill rather than turning and running deep.
Year 1: four-phase special teamer. Ceiling: a part-time starting safety in sub packages who plays 40 percent of snaps.
A press-man scheme that asks him to travel with an outside receiver, where his short arms and reactive eyes get exposed on back-shoulder throws.
His best NFL football came when Kansas City stopped asking him to cover and let him run and hit.
Nazeeh Johnson 2021 highlights, Marshall University
The senior tape that earned him the 259th pick.
Nazeeh Johnson senior highlights, Marshall University
Downhill tackling and ball production in Conference USA.
Nazeeh Johnson career highlight tape
His Kansas City snaps, including the 2024 season as a part-time starter.
Johnson was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia and attended Millbrook High School in Winchester, Virginia. He was unranked by 247Sports coming out of high school and walked on at Marshall, which is the least promising starting point a drafted player can have.
He redshirted, then started four seasons for the Thundering Herd while majoring in communications. His career line is 302 tackles, six tackles for loss, one sack, seven interceptions, 19 passes defended and a defensive touchdown, the kind of volume that only comes from a player who never leaves the field.
The two seasons with publicly verified splits show the shape of his game. In the shortened 2020 season he had 59 tackles in eight games, a 7.4-per-game rate, with two interceptions, two passes broken up and a forced fumble. As a senior in 2021 he posted 67 tackles in ten games with 2.5 tackles for loss, two interceptions and five passes broken up. He then ran 4.38 with a 42-inch vertical at his pro day, and Kansas City took him with the 259th pick, the third-to-last selection in the draft.
- 01
Explosive athleticism
a 42-inch vertical and 10-foot-9 broad jump, elite lower-body power for any defensive back.
- 02
Timed speed
a 4.38 forty with a 1.52 ten-yard split, the kind of burst that lets him recover when he guesses wrong.
- 03
Tackling volume
302 career tackles across four seasons of starting, with the willingness to fit runs downhill.
- 04
Ball production
seven interceptions and 19 passes defended, so the playmaking is on tape and not just in testing.
- 05
Special teams projection
walk-on background, speed and tackling, exactly the profile that survives on coverage units.
- 01
Length
30 3/8-inch arms and a wingspan under six feet, short measurements for anyone asked to play the boundary.
- 02
Anticipation
he reacts to route breaks instead of reading the concept, which costs a step against NFL timing.
- 03
Level of competition
Conference USA offenses rarely tested him with the kind of speed he would face every Sunday.
- 04
Position definition
he is a safety-sized athlete with cornerback speed but neither the length nor the instincts of either.
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Marshall | — | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Marshall | 8 | 59 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 2021 | Marshall | 10 | 67 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 0 |
| Career | — | 18 | 302 | 1 | 7 | 19 | 0 |
Career totals come from the Marshall program record: 302 tackles, six tackles for loss, one sack, seven interceptions, 19 passes defended and a defensive touchdown across four seasons as a starter. Only the 2020 and 2021 splits are published by cfbstats for him; the 2017 through 2019 season rows are omitted rather than estimated, so the listed seasons do not sum to the career line.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A special teams core player who starts in spurts when the depth chart thins.
A physical, explosive safety who turned athletic traits into a long starting career.
A Chiefs defensive back whose career stalled at special teams contributor.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Kansas City drafted Johnson with pick 259 and he made the roster as a rookie, playing 11 games with eight tackles, almost all of it on special teams, and picking up a Super Bowl LVII ring in his first season. Then came the setback: he tore his ACL in training camp and was placed on season-ending injured reserve on July 30, 2023, missing the entire year while the Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII, which gave him a second ring.He re-signed with Kansas City on March 11, 2024 and delivered the best football of his career. He appeared in 16 games with six starts, totaling 56 tackles, a sack and three passes defended, holding real defensive snaps for the first time. Across 27 regular-season games through 2024 he recorded 64 tackles.
His 2025 season ended before it started when he left an August 15 preseason game against Seattle with a shoulder injury and landed on injured reserve. Tennessee signed him on July 27, 2026, but he was suspended six games on August 14 for violating the league's performance-enhancing substance policy and released on August 30. Two rings and a season as a part-time starter is a strong return from the third-to-last pick in a draft.