Current Eagles safety C.J Gardner-Johnson is gearing up to play in Super Bowl 59 Sunday. He returned to Philadelphia this season after spending a year in Detroit. A year he called “hell” according to the Detroit Free Press.
“It was hell,” Gardner-Johnson told Dave Birkett of the Press this week in New Orleans. “I got lied to, so it was, whatever. I got told, respectfully, I was going to get brought back and didn’t get brought back. And offseason went real for me, signing back here because I wasn’t really tripping on it. It all worked out.”
Gardner-Johnson had felt he was going to stay in Detroit after signing a one-year deal with the team last offseason, despite missing most of the season with a torn pectoral muscle. Instead, he took his talents back to south Philly and is now set to play in his second Super Bowl with the Eagles.
Gardner-Johnson even said “everybody” in the organization wanted him back last season but then changed their minds before the playoffs.
Ultimately, that one season ended up being a rocky one for Gardner-Johnson in Detroit, one in which he only played in three regular season games.
“Truthfully, like in Detroit it was hell,” Gardner-Johnson said, via Birkett. “I went there just to — OK, when I got hurt I was like, ‘(Expletive) it.’ Truthfully. That’s why I didn’t go rehab there.” Gardner-Johnson is referencing the fact he decided to rehab in Florida instead of Detroit, as he felt he didn’t have much of a future with the Lions.
Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph were starting to come into their own and Ifeatu Melifonwu had also broken into the starting lineup, leaving Gardner-Johnson as the odd man out.
“I was on a one-year deal, so it was like there was no point unless they were really bringing me back,” he told Birkett. “By the time midseason came and I was getting healthy, they wasn’t trying to extend me, I’m like, ‘I’m cool.’”
Ultimately, both sides are happy. The Lions have their star duo in Branch and Joseph while Gardner-Johnson is back in Philadelphia and back in the Super Bowl.
