Former Huskies defensive lineman Jaylen Johnson launches coaching career at Inglemoor High School
Steven Hannan was scrambling.
The head football coach at Inglemoor High School in Kenmore was just days away from the start of spring drills, and he didn’t have a defensive line coach. He interviewed two or three options as he searched for a replacement for a longtime staff member that suddenly decided not to return. Nobody seemed like the right fit, so Hannan was resigning himself to the fact that the rest of the staff would have to pull double duty this season.
And then Jaylen Johnson — all 6-foot-3 and 286 pounds of him — appeared in Hannah’s doorway. He was looking for a job.
If Johnson had been wearing the #92 uniform he donned for Washington, Hannan would’ve recognized him immediately. A graduate of the university, Hannan is a loyal UW fan. Johnson played four seasons for the Huskies and had just left the year before. As soon as he introduced himself, Hannan knew exactly who he was. He didn’t know why he was there.
Johnson quickly explained that his mother had recently moved in nearby. He had just returned from a tryout with the Denver Broncos, where the team decided to go in a different direction. Then Johnson did, too. He’d wanted to get into coaching since high school and decided it was the right time.
He asked Hannan if there was a spot open on staff.
Hannan said, “You’re hired.”
“I just have a deep love for the game and x’s and o’s,” Johnson said during a phone conversation this week. “I could just sit and talk about it all day, so it was a natural transition for me. I talked to coach (Chris) Petersen because my goal at the end is to coach college, of course. He said go coach the high school game and get the experience and see if you love the game enough to coach it.”
Off the field, Hannan described Johnson as soft-spoken and kind, always respectful. But once he settled in, a different side of Johnson emerged. After the Vikings’ first game, the staff gathered at one of the coach’s houses to recap the performance. That’s when Johnson spoke up.
“He goes, ‘Hey guys, I’m pretty comfortable with what we’ve got going on here now. You might see a different Jaylen Johnson starting next week,’ Hannan said. “We were kind of like, OK, we hope we know what you’re saying but we’re really not sure.”
The coaches’ assumption was right.
By the next practice, the quiet, reserved Johnson that Hannah knew transformed into a fiery, passionate coach. It was a shift Hannan welcomed, and a version that was promised by UW defensive line coach Ikaika Malloe. In an early phone conversation, Malloe promise Hannan that Inglemoor had gotten a gem, as well as a future Division I college football coach.
“I knew he was going to be in a profession with young adults,” Malloe said. “I really did. That kid has a huge heart. I knew he was going to be a teacher or a coach.”
As it turns out, Johnson is both. During the day, he works at Inglemoor as a paraeducator within the school’s Aspire program. The course catalog describes Aspire as “specially designed behavior programs for students that require support in areas of behavior, social skills and social-emotional needs.”
“It’s challenging,” said Johnson, who often pictured himself as a history teacher and a head high school football coach, “but it definitely makes you feel good at the end of the day.”
Coaching has provided a similar experience. At UW, Johnson’s teammates used to call him Uncle Jay. Malloe noticed that Johnson was the first person to help incoming players. If they needed extra instruction after practice, he’d join them on the field. If they needed to watch film, he’d stick around for that, too. In his spare time, he worked with elementary-aged kids in the community.
When Johnson was in high school, he helped coach the local Pop Warner team. It was there, as he watched kids enthusiastically run drills and embrace direction, that Johnson first realized he wanted to be a coach.
“Just seeing the improvement, it really just brought a smile to my face and warmed up my heart,” Johnson said. “I kind of knew early on, once I was done playing, I definitely wanted to get into coaching.”
It’s not surprising to discover that what Johnson enjoys most is just being around the players. The feeling, it seems, is mutual. The junior varsity team members will often beg him to come watch their games and offer feedback. Hannan said Johnson has a knack for making connections.
“He’s inspiring for kids,” Hannan said. “Just naturally, he does a good job just treating kids a little bit different. He does an amazing job figuring out what motivates this particular kid, and that’s what he uses for that particular kid.
“There are a lot of coaches that are like, ‘It’s my way or the highway. This is how we do it. This is how we make it happen.’ ... He does a really great job of just feeling his way through these kids and getting to know them and motivating them for the best way for them. It’s really impressive. He’s an impressive individual.”
Johnson draws on the skills he learned at UW daily. He uses the same grade sheet as Malloe and has incorporated several of the Huskies’ drills.
During one early practice, Hannan introduced Johnson to a tackling drill he dubbed the fracture drill. When they returned to the same drill two weeks later, Johnson asked if he could change it. He believed UW ran it better, and he invited Hannan to watch.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, Jaylen. This is genius. This is awesome,’” Hannan said. “He always has great ideas. He’s always thinking about football. He shows up in my room and he draws stuff up on the boards and he’s like, ‘What do you think of this? What do you think of this?’
Sometimes, Hannan has to pull him back, reminding Johnson that he’s coaching high school and not college. There just isn’t enough time for everything Johnson wants to implement. That’s been a difficult adjustment.
“Definitely the hardest part is taking complex terminology and the complex defense I learned at UW and at my high school and kind of communicating those techniques to the kids,” Johnson said. “I just had a conversation today about how spoiled we were at UW. I was there for five years with the same guys. I could make adjustments and explain to the other guys.
“Now that I’m here, I’m kind of expecting the same kind of level of technique and intensity from my high school kids. It’s not the same. For me, it’s trying to figure out what their strengths and weaknesses are and apply them to the game plan. That’s the biggest struggle, for sure.”
That aspect, Malloe said, will come with time
“I told him that for everything he learned, he still has to put his own identity, his own twist on that,” Malloe said. “That’s what makes coaching fun. It’s still yours in a way … and you can mold (these kids). In high school, they listen to everything. They want to know as much as they can. He doesn’t realize how critical his position is yet.”
Johnson would still like to coach at the college level in the future. But he’s not thinking that far ahead right now. He laughed as he called himself stubborn, saying he doesn’t plan on going anywhere until Inglemoor “starts winning a whole bunch of games.”
“I love being around the team,” Johnson said. “I love being around the guys, just coming in every day and bringing that same level of fire intensity. You just see the kids get super excited when we come to practice. That’s just a great feeling.”
