Las Vegas Raiders’ Jakob Johnson Brands Himself ‘Thad Castle’ After Revealing What He Expected From His College Life in the USA
The NFL as a league and football as a sport is growing in popularity with each year that passes. This means that players from all over the world are getting into it and aspiring to join the NFL and play for a major team in the league. The same has been the case with Jakob Johnson, who was born in Germany and made his way to play for the Las Vegas Raiders.
Johnson was inspired to take up football and join the sport after coming across a game by accident on TV. He went on to play for the Stuttgart Scorpions U-19 team before moving to Jacksonville, Florida, in his senior year of high school. He was a four-star recruit in high school and joined the Tennessee Volunteers as a linebacker. Johnson graduated from Tennessee with a degree in kinesiology and was drafted by the New England Patriots in 2019 through the NFL‘s International Player Pathway Program.
Jakob Johnson believed that America would be like what he saw in movies and TV shows when he came over from Germany.
He was convinced college would be like the show “Blue Mountain State” which prompted me to ask him who’s the Thad Castle of the #Raiders pic.twitter.com/acBgIgUBG6
— Levi Edwards (@theleviedwards) September 6, 2022
When Jakob Johnson joined college in Tennessee, he had a very different idea of what to expect. The former New England Patriots man excepted college life to be a lot like the movie ‘Blue Mountain State’. A sitcom that portrayed college life in an extremely unrealistic manner filled with s*x, binge drinking, drugs, wild partying, and hazing. Which is what Johnson expected in his college years as well. When asked who the Thad Castle on the team would be he said, “On this team? Oh man, I might be myself. you know I somehow ended up being kind of a meathead so it was definitely a huge inspiration.”
Jakob Johson’s career in the NFL so far
Jakob Johnson started his career with the New England Patriots, his career did not start off extremely well as he did not make the 53-man cut for the 2019 season. Thanks to injuries to other players, Johnson was eventually able to play a game, and he recorded one reception for five yards and took 94 total snaps 71 on offense and 23 on special teams in 4 games played.
In 2020, in the second week, he scored his first touchdown and by doing so became the first player through the International Player Pathway to score a touchdown. He also became the first German offensive player to score a touchdown and the second German player overall to do the same.
