The Saints beat Bloomsburg 22-7 and Archbishop Ryan 30-0. It was a big deal, because Neumann-Goretti had only won two games all year the season before.
At practice Sheem was messing with the defense and said, "Just call me Superman." The name stuck.
Their coach Albie Crosby told Joseph Santoliquilo of the Philly Voice, “Tysheem reminds me of a Desmond Howard, Charles Woodson type, who we can use multiple ways, and can hurt you in so many different ways. I believe the sky is the limit for Tysheem. His teammates do a lot, which allows him to do the things he does.
“Tysheem still plays defense when needed, but we’re trying to keep him fresh. Every year I watch him, Tysheem gets better and better. He’s a great student of the game and he’s a big key to our success. But his teammates are bracing him and they’re helping him create that success.”
Superman made the all-state team three seasons in a row as a freshman, sophomore and junior, rated a Top-15 player in the state, a four-star player, number 207 in the whole country. By the time he was done, Neumann-Goretti High named him the Player of the Decade. He had offers from Ole Miss, Baylor, Florida, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Stanford.
And Superman flew all the way out of North Philadelphia.
They call North Philadelphia The Badlands. It's not the place where Rocky ran to the top of the steps. This weekend in North Philly there were three separate fatal shootings. An Uber driver, a father of three was gunned down by a stray bullet. A 68-year-old woman was killed, shot once in the left side of her neck. A 20-year-old man at N. Broad Street and W. Girard Avenue died around 2 a.m. Saturday night.
Freshman year, after Tysheem Johnson enrolled at Ole Miss, safe on the tree-lined campus in genteel Oxford, Mississippi, he told the student paper Daily Mississippian:
“North Philly is very cruel. People like me don’t really go to certain functions or hang out on certain streets or blocks as we would say because there is a high chance of getting killed. I looked at it like, if I wanted to be a full-time football player, I have to watch how I move,” Johnson said. “Certain times, when a couple of my homies would want to go somewhere, into an area that I knew there was a risk that we would get into a fight or might get shot at, then I would just say that I’m not going, or we shouldn’t go. That’s how being around all of North Philly is, or really, Philly in general.”
At Vaught-Hemingway Stadium the student section is on the north end. The boys wear navy blue blazers with button down shirts, pressed khaki slacks. They stay until the end of the fourth quarter and if Ole Miss wins, the stadium crew lights off fireworks that fill the night sky. It's a different kind of gunfire, one of jubilation rather than harsh reality.
Sheem said to Ruby Draayer, the writer from the school paper, “I didn’t want to go to Maryland because it was too close to home. It’s about three hours away from North Philly, and if I ever just didn’t have something else to do, I could have just gone home. I shouldn’t be home,” Johnson said. “Coming down South, it’s a smaller city. It’s easier to stay out of trouble. I picked it where I could be a household name and change a program around. I trusted coach Partridge’s word that I would be able to come in and start. Ole Miss just felt the most like home.”
Vaught-Hemingway is named after Judge William Hemingway (1869-1937), a professor of law and longtime chairman of the University's Committee on Athletics. The Vaught is John Howard Vaught, who had a 190-61-12 record at Ole Miss including National Championships in 1959, 1960 and 1962.
October of '62, James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the university after several weeks of rioting and protests.
Sheem told Draayer, “I love North Philly so much because that’s where I am from and where I was born. It’s all I know, and it made me who I am today because I had to be tough and always aware of my surroundings. In Philly, I always had to keep my head on a swivel out there. It motivated me, and only a few athletes that I knew actually made it out to the college level, and then the streets basically took them. Seeing that every day, with them having so much talent, I just always knew that I couldn’t follow in their footsteps. I need to take a different path. There are a few people who I know that are successful and I just piggyback off of them and how they stay out of the way. I just try to mimic them as much as I can to get to where they’re at.”
On the field, he excelled quickly. He enrolled early and impressed the veterans at spring practice, already making the two-deep of a loaded roster. As a freshman he made the All-SEC freshman team and the Dean's Honor Roll in the spring of 2021, the Athletic Director Honor Roll in the spring and fall of 2022.
Sheem, who used to be Superman in North Philly, racked up 44 tackles as a frosh. Eighteen years old, 1030 miles from home, he added an interception and a pass deflection on a defense they nicknamed The Landsharks. The unit shut out Georgia Tech 42-0. On September 6th they beat Louisville 43-24. Johnson had eight tackles in his Rebel debut. They held Tulane to three touchdowns in a 61-21 victory.
By October the Rebels with their Landshark defense reached number 12 in the country. They clubbed LSU 31-17 in front of 64,523 fans, on the day Eli Manning had his number retired, the third player ever at Ole Miss after his dad Archie and defensive back Chucky Mullins.
Lane Kiffin said, “It’s fun to be the head coach when your defense is playing good. You don’t have that feeling like you’ve got to score all the time like we’ve had at times here.”
Early in the game the Landsharks faced fourth and goal at their own three. Owen Purcell of The Mississippian wrote:
The short-side receiver motioned across the formation, and quarterback Max Johnson took the snap, rolling to his left and surveyed the field before trying to hit receiver Trey Palmer at the pylon. Before his pass could reach its target, however, freshman safety Tysheem Johnson undercut the route and intercepted the ball.
Sheem still has his head on a swivel, only for now it's just football. This September, he'll play Nickleback and Safety for the Ducks.
So cool! I can’t wait to see him play!
ReplyDeleteI agree! He's grown a lot over his two years at Ole Miss. Last season he had 78 tackles, which would have been tops on the Oregon defense.
ReplyDelete