Paris
Johnson Jr..
Paris
Johnson Jr..
Ohio State· 6'6"· 313 lb
"Ohio State needed a right guard, so the best tackle prospect in the class went inside for a year and came back out an All-American — that is the whole scouting report."Pre-draft read
Three-year Buckeye who spent 2021 at right guard before finishing as Ohio State's blindside protector. Pass protection is the calling card: long, patient kick-slides, a wide base, and hands that arrive late but heavy, letting him ride speed rushers past the pocket instead of lunging. He mirrors counters with his feet, and the year inside shows up in how calmly he resets his anchor.
As a run blocker he is best on the move — pulling, climbing to linebackers, sealing backside on wide zone — where length and body control turn contact into displacement in space. He is more positional blocker than point-of-attack mauler, but the athletic profile is rare (9.74 RAS, 29 bench reps, 36 1/8-inch arms). The signature is versatility with no drop-off.
Outside/wide-zone base with play-action, but scheme-agnostic enough for a gap-and-power offense
Year 1: plug-and-play starter at right tackle while the hands and anchor get coached up. Ceiling: long-term, Pro Bowl-level blindside protector on an offense that asks its tackles to reach, climb and pull.
A heavy-duty gap scheme that lives on down blocks and asks its tackles to uproot 300-pound five-techniques at the point of attack; the finish is control, not displacement.
The year at right guard is a real asset — he can slide inside in an emergency without the technique falling apart.
Paris Johnson Jr. highlights vs. Notre Dame — Ohio State OT (2022)
Full-game tackle reps from his first start at left tackle in the 2022 opener.
Film Breakdown: Paris Johnson Jr., OT Ohio State
Rep-by-rep breakdown of the pass sets, hand timing and second-level climbs.
Paris Johnson Jr. left tackle / right guard highlights
Side-by-side look at the 2021 guard season and the 2022 tackle season.
A five-star recruit who did the unglamorous thing first. Johnson arrived in Columbus as the top tackle in the 2020 class, played five games as a freshman — including snaps at guard in the national championship — then moved inside for a full season at right guard because that was where Ohio State needed him. He went back outside as a junior and was a consensus All-American at left tackle: 31 games, 26 consecutive starts, two position groups, zero complaints.
That path is why the tape reads mature. The 2022 season put him against Michigan's edge rotation, Georgia's playoff front, and Notre Dame's power looks, and the pass sets held up in all of them — wide, unhurried, with recovery athleticism when a rusher won the first step. The flags are the ones that follow every tackle with one year of outside starts: hands that get wide and invite the swipe, a base that narrows against long-arm bull rush, and a run-game finish that reads more control than punish.
The board saw a top-ten lineman all cycle and a plug-and-play left tackle for a team willing to wait a year on polish. Arizona traded back from three, collected a haul, then traded up from twelve to six to get him — the first offensive lineman off the board and Monti Ossenfort's first pick as general manager.
- 01
Pass-set patience
He uses a long, controlled kick-slide with a wide base to handle speed rushers.
- 02
Positional versatility
He completed a full season at right guard and an All-America year at left tackle.
- 03
Rare athletic profile
He has a 9.74 RAS with 29 bench reps and 36 1/8-inch arms at 6-6, 313 pounds.
- 04
Second-level work
He climbs and pulls comfortably, finding moving linebackers and staying attached in the run game.
- 05
Football maturity
He has three seasons of high-leverage snaps, a graduate degree, and strong practice habits.
- 01
Hand placement drifts
His hand placement drifts wide on contact, giving veteran rushers a clean swipe.
- 02
Anchor can narrow
His anchor can narrow against a true long-arm bull rush, allowing power to convert.
- 03
Run finishing is control
He sustains and steers defenders but rarely uproots a defensive end at the point of attack.
- 04
Only one full tackle season
His technical rep bank against NFL-level speed-to-power counters is limited.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
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- Vertical
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- Broad jump
- 110inp50
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| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Ohio State | 5 |
| 2021 | Ohio State | 13 |
| 2022 | Ohio State | 13 |
| Career | — | 31 |
Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics. Games and starts verified against the official Ohio State bio (31 games played 2020-22, 26 consecutive starts across 2021-22). 2020 start count is not published, so it is left null rather than zero-filled.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Honors
- Consensus All-American (2022)
- First-team All-Big Ten (2022)
- Second-team All-Big Ten (2021)
- Anthony Munoz Award (2019)
Top-ten athletic tackle who becomes a high-end, quietly excellent blindside starter — with availability as the recurring asterisk.
The movement-skill ceiling if the hands and anchor ever catch up to the feet: a tackle who wins in space as easily as he wins on an island.
The downside if the anchor never firms up: a graceful pass-setter who gets moved backwards by power and never locks down the job.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Paris Johnson Jr. started all 17 games at right tackle for the Arizona Cardinals in his rookie season. He was a consistent presence on the offensive line.
Arizona did not ease him in. Johnson started all 17 games at right tackle as a rookie in 2023, then slid to the blindside in 2024 after D.J. Humphries was released, and he has been the Cardinals' left tackle ever since. Both of the next two seasons ended early on the same theme: a knee injury put him on injured reserve in late December 2024 after 14 games, and another knee issue suffered against the Rams in Week 14 of 2025 ended that year after 12. When he plays, the level is clear — 807 snaps and a 76.6 PFF grade in 2025, top-20 among tackles, and he led all NFL tackles in Pro Bowl fan voting that December.
The evaluation aged well; the availability is the open question. Arizona exercised his fifth-year option in April 2026 at roughly $19 million, he has publicly set $40 million per year as his extension target, and he opened 2026 camp on PUP before being activated two days later. Forty-three starts in three seasons is real, but so are two straight Decembers on IR. The pick itself looks right — a starting-caliber left tackle from day one at a premium position, which is exactly what the sixth pick is supposed to buy — and the ceiling still depends on him stringing seventeen games together.
Data note: Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics. Games and starts verified against the official Ohio State bio (31 games played 2020-22, 26 consecutive starts across 2021-22). 2020 start count is not published, so it is left null rather than zero-filled.