Family business moves to Giants, Jets sidelines on Sunday

It wasn’t too long ago that if you asked Maddie Johnson what she wanted to do with her life, she’d defiantly blurt out her answer.

“I grew up saying I wanted to be the first woman to play in the NFL,” she said.

Why not? She spent plenty of time around the sport as a youngster, always attending the camps where her father, Bobby Johnson, was coaching, always digging through the equipment bags on the sidelines of Dad’s practices looking for a football to toss around.

When she went to the college games at Miami University in Ohio and Indiana where he was on the sideline, all of the coaches’ kids would sit together in one section of the stands . . . except for Maddie. She would go off by herself. She wanted to study the nuances on the field clear from the distractions of the other youngsters.

Eventually, around the fifth grade, that desire waned, replaced by volleyball and basketball and other pursuits. She played lacrosse at the University of Detroit Mercy, too.

Now, at age 24, she is years removed from wanting to actually play pro football.

But she still wants to have a career in the league.

Maddie Johnson is a second-year football operations intern for the Jets this season. Most weekends, that is exciting enough. But this weekend it will mean the fulfillment of a football dream that until recently she didn’t even know she had and never would have guessed was possible.

Her Jets will be facing the Giants . . . for whom her father is the offensive line coach.

“Football is just a piece of my heart I could never leave, and going through high school and college, I knew I was going to have a career in football, I just didn’t know exactly how, and I knew there would always be a chance of going up against my dad,” she told Newsday. “I’ve always imagined moments where it’s a regular-season game and I’m going on the field hugging my dad in the pregame and telling him good luck.”

It will happen Sunday.

“I might get a little emotional or nervous,” she said. “But at the end of the day, I’m not coaching. I can relax. And I know he can’t.”

That stress won’t prevent him from enjoying the coming moment any less, of course. As the Giants’ line, in near-constant flux and playing with various degrees of competence all season, prepares to stave off the Jets’ ferocious defensive front, Bobby Johnson has a lot of headaches, but this Girl Dad has been waiting for this day just as long as Maddie has.

“I wanted my kids to find their own way and pursue their dreams, and she has always said she wanted to work in football,” he said. “Maddie has attacked it. One of the biggest joys I get is when I bump into coaches who have crossed paths with her and they beam about her like ‘wow, what an impressive young woman.’ To me, that’s a better compliment than anyone could ever say about me. After a game, they say, ‘Your line played great.’ Appreciate it. Thanks. That’s my job. But she’s my kid and it’s been pretty cool, pretty neat to watch her do this.”

While still in college, Maddie Johnson did two short summer internships with the Toronto Argonauts of the CFL and the Washington Commanders before becoming one of 45 women selected to attend the annual NFL Women’s Forum in March 2022. It was there that she first met Aaron Degerness and Mari Jo Kohler, who run the Jets’ football operations department.

She still had to apply for season-long internships, though, so she sent her resume to 31 of the 32 teams in the league. The one she skipped was the one with which her father had just gotten a job, following Brian Daboll from Buffalo to the Giants.

“She did not send any of her information to the Giants,” said her mother, Kristen Johnson. “She wanted to do this on her own. She didn’t put on any of her paperwork who Bobby was and what their relationship is. With the last name Johnson and her dad an offensive line coach, you can usually slide under the radar for a little bit until somebody recognizes who you are. She wanted to start her career not in his shadow.”

While Bobby and Kristen were in the process of moving from Buffalo to New Jersey, Maddie told them about her opportunity to interview with the Jets. They were intrigued. Then she told them about a second interview. Hmmm. Finally, she told them she was offered the position and that she too would be making the move to New Jersey.

She has her own place closer to the Jets’ Florham Park headquarters than her parents, who are nearer to the Giants in East Rutherford. But they are close enough to each other that Maddie stops by often — especially on her way to and from the stadium — and occasionally brings a load or two of laundry while stopping by to watch a Giants game with Mom when the Jets aren’t playing.

“I was like ‘Yes! I’m finally getting away and getting my distance!’ ” Maddie said. “And then it was like, ‘Nope, just kidding, I’m 45 minutes away from you guys.’ It was kind of funny. But I like it. My mom really likes it. She loves cheering for two teams right now.”

Growing up as a coach’s kid had its benefits — which Maddie absorbed from both her dad and her mom, who coached high school softball — but also its pitfalls.

“Even when I was playing sports growing up, he would try to coach me up and I would have to be like, ‘Dad, you are not a lacrosse coach. Relax,’ ” she said. “But that’s his natural instinct. He’s tough and very vocal and a little aggressive. He’ll yell at you and then be like ‘OK, you know I didn’t mean that, but we need to get this done.’ ”

Maddie said he parented the way he coaches.

“Obviously, he is a lot harder on these guys than me and my sister [Livvie, a senior at Michigan State], but still that same thing where he expects the best out of us,” she said. “He knows that with the right approach, he can help us get there. I always hear from players who have played for my dad before. They’ll tell me, ‘Man, your dad is tough. Love him, but he’s tough.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty much how he is. I get it.’ ”

“She wasn’t thrilled to have me as a coach and then come home and hear more coaching,” said Kristen, who volunteered to lead Maddie’s teams only when she was very young. “But it’s great to hear the things she says now. Both Bobby and I sit back and recognize the things we would say to her and she would not want to hear it from us, yet she is repeating those same things to the people she works with and even some of the players. It’s good to know that she definitely listened.”

Where this always fluid business and their two careers will take both Maddie and Bobby Johnson, no one knows.

Maddie would like to run the operations department for an NFL team someday (she describes operations as being the “team parent” for the organization, handling everything from ticketing to travel to food to family accommodations at home and away games), but she also is open to other avenues. That could mean having any of the 31 other teams as her next steppingstone.

Bobby may stick with the Giants for a while, but the life of a position coach is always transient. He’s already with his seventh different NFL team since making the jump from colleges to the pros in 2010. Where and when that eighth one will come along is anyone’s guess.

Maybe it will be together.

“I always tell her, ‘Don’t forget about me one day when you can hire me,’ ” Bobby said. “I won’t be ‘Dad’ at work. She always chuckles about that.”

For now, Sunday is as close as they’ll come to that in their professional relationship. Same city. Same stadium. Different teams.

“I knew there would always be a chance of going up against my dad,” Maddie said. “It’s a small world, so we’re going to run into each other all the time.”

As this game approached, Bobby said he tried to establish some ground rules.

“I don’t handle it like some people would think I might,” he said. “I told her: ‘Don’t be talking any [expletive] now. Be careful. Remember who pays the rent.' I’m petty like that. But it’s friendly. It’s cool. It’s cool to see her in that arena and take the pride in her job and her team.”

Maddie doesn’t abide by those guidelines.

“My parents raised me to be a competitive person, so my dad and I kind of go back and forth throughout the season teasing each other about each other’s team,” Maddie said. “But this year with the Jets actually playing the Giants, I was like, ‘Well, I guess we’ll see, you know? After the game, I guess we’ll see after all that talk!’ I tease him a little. ‘’Do you have any plan for our D-line, because their depth is crazy.’ ”

She does have some ground rules of her own for Sunday when they plan to meet before kickoff.

“He always calls me his big girl,” Maddie said. “He’ll get emotional and be like, ‘You’re still my little big girl.’ And I’m like, ‘Dad, we’re at work. Don’t spread that around too much!’ ”

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.