‘Forward progress’ still wrong, says Derrick Johnson as new Chiefs Hall of Famer
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Derrick Johnson was selected to the Kansas City Chiefs Hall of Fame for 2026.
- A 2017 playoff sack of Marcus Mariota was blown dead: forward progress was not reviewable.
- He spent 13 seasons with Chiefs and still holds records for tackles & games played by LB.
Derrick Johnson delivered enough memorable moments in his Chiefs career to become the latest player selected to the team’s Hall of Fame.
There was the now-retired NFL linebacker’s two-touchdown game at Denver; a 14-tackle game at Oakland; and the time he broke up four passes at St. Louis.
But in a matter of seconds one of the best plays of his career became his most bitter.
In the Chiefs’ 2017 Wild Card playoff game at home against the Tennessee Titans, Johnson rocketed untouched on a second-quarter blitz and blasted quarterback Marcus Mariota.
The ball came loose before Mariota hit the turf and the Chiefs recovered it. But instead of Chiefs ball, late in the second quarter with a 14-0 lead, the Titans maintained possession because referee Jeff Triplette had blown the play dead during the sack, ruling forward progress.
The call wasn’t reviewable.
“That was a great play,” Johnson said Friday. “And you wonder, ‘How did they call that?’ Yeah, I still think about that.”
Chiefs coach Andy Reid and team chairman and CEO Clark Hunt looked on as Johnson recalled the mostly high points of his 13 seasons in Kansas City. He’s still the franchise’s career leader in tackles and games played by a linebacker.
He spent 13 of his 14 NFL seasons with the Chiefs, from 2025 until 2017.
Johnson noted that he narrowly missed out on winning a pair of championships. He finished at Texas as one of the nation’s top defensive players in college in 2004, a year before the Longhorns won the national title.
And he left the Chiefs two years before superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes led Kansas City to its first Super Bowl championship in 50 years.
But at least in KC, he felt like he was a part of the Chiefs’ success.
“I was in it with them to some degree,” Johnson said. “I was part of the building blocks with the guys who made it to the Super Bowl, winning that first one in this era. That was awesome.”
This story was originally published April 24, 2026 at 4:54 PM with the headline "‘Forward progress’ still wrong, says Derrick Johnson as new Chiefs Hall of Famer."