Editor's Note: This is the first of a four-part series on senior offensive lineman Tyler Johnstone and the two knee injuries that have kept him from game action since Dec. 30, 2013. Parts 2-4 will run daily through Friday morning.

Oregon's Tyler Johnstone pre-snap against Colorado.

Tyler Johnstone had just finished going through the long, arduous process of recovering from a torn anterior cruciate ligament – the surgery, the seven months of monotonous rehab exercises, the mental hurdles that come with any serious injury.

He wasn't ready to do it again.

But here sat Johnstone, then a junior, in the doctor’s office inside the University of Oregon’s Casanova Center last August, blankly staring as MRI images of his knee flashed across a computer screen.

As team physician Dr. Gregory Skaggs pointed first to a scan of a healthy right knee, then Johnstone’s, the facade began to crumble.

“We were kind of watching the screen go,” Johnstone said, “and (Skaggs) pointed and was like, ‘That’s where your ACL is supposed to be.’”

"'It’s just not there anymore.’”

After tearing his ACL the first time in the Alamo Bowl in December 2013, Johnstone had promised himself he'd be strong.

He’d done the intensive rehab with the singular goal of returning to the field in time to join his teammates on the Autzen Stadium sideline opposite the South Dakota Coyotes on Aug. 30, eight months to the day from when he threw his helmet at a trash-talking Longhorn, unable to relax a single muscle in his right leg.

Johnstone's right leg following knee surgery in Jan. 2014.

Johnstone had big plans for his fourth fall in Eugene, what he thought would have likely been his final few months as a Duck. The potential all-conference offensive tackle planned to forgo his senior year to enter the NFL Draft. It would be the culmination of a meteoric rise for a guy whose parents once assumed his final game would come at Hamilton High School in Chandler, Ariz.

Sitting in the small room, Johnstone raised his head to meet the eyes of the others there with him: head coach Mark Helfrich, offensive coordinator Scott Frost, offensive line coach Steve Greatwood and graduate assistant coach Joe Bernardi. If he was hoping to find a steeled gaze to prop himself against, he was out of luck.

Bernardi didn’t see one dry eye among the 12. For Greatwood – a coaching veteran of nearly three decades – the anguish he felt wasn’t for the loss of his starting left tackle for the upcoming season, but was a father figure’s reaction to seeing a devoted pupil's hard work come undone.

Johnstone's eyes flickered from one crestfallen face to the next as reality set in. The 6-foot-6, 275 pound lineman had never felt so small.

“You do all that work, and then it’s like, ‘Was it really worth it?’” Johnstone said, reflecting on the meeting. “‘Am I going to be able to come back a second time?’ I just couldn’t be in there anymore.”

A history of health

A two-year letterman in high school, Johnstone was a four-star recruit in the 247Sports Composite algorithm when he arrived at Oregon prior to the 2011 season with an unusually sparse medical record for a high school athlete, let alone a football player. Johnstone hadn’t suffered more than a partially torn PCL while at Oregon, and the notion worse could happen to him wasn’t on the front of anyone’s mind, including his father.

“I played high school football growing up, and I know how rough it could be,” Kevin Johnstone said. “I didn’t think seriously about the potential of injuries. It didn’t really worry me, nor did I get that indication from Tyler.”

A self-proclaimed “super-optimist,” Johnstone doesn’t worry about too much in general. “A rare person where you don’t have to...” girlfriend Ashley Laing stops to stare at a lone cloud floating by before finishing her thought, “...where his mentality is something you can’t teach.” She didn’t make it five words into her next sentence before his antics from around the corner caused her to dissolve into a fit of laughter.

“Everyone knows my personality,” said Johnstone, whose infectious energy was on display to anyone watching local ABC affiliate KEZI during his “Moose Time” segments in football season. “I’m a bubbly, energetic dude who’s bouncing everywhere and only gets serious when I need to be. I think it takes a person bigger than myself to never get down on yourself, but I feel like I do a pretty good job staying up and remaining positive.”













Johnstone’s parents and Laing – not quite his girlfriend at the moment – were in San Antonio on Dec. 30, 2013, to watch him play in the Alamo Bowl against Texas. Despite a disappointing end to the season, there was widespread hope that Oregon would use a bowl win to build toward a stronger season come September.

Less than two minutes into the second quarter, quarterback Marcus Mariota scrambled to his right before star defensive end Jackson Jeffcoat knocked the ball out of bounds. On the opposite side of the field, Johnstone was locked up with another Texas pass-rusher when his right knee suddenly gave out.

All of the muscles in his leg seized as he rolled on the turf. He could not relax the limb, gripping his knee with both hands before hurling his shiny green helmet at the nearest man in orange.

Even as Johnstone’s face was contorted in agony while he was attended to by five members of the training staff, Kevin Johnstone still wasn’t sure that anything was seriously wrong. After all, Tyler was always frustrated when he had to miss a play, and he would have to sit out at a little while for further examination.

He figured Tyler had thrown his helmet in frustration. That was technically true, though his son did have a specific target in mind.

“I already knew something was seriously wrong, and I had a couple Texas players come back and talk some trash while I was in obvious pain,” Tyler Johnstone said. “At that time, I knew it was going to be bad. I was in the moment, and I think I had some choice words for them too before laying back down. You can probably lip-read the specifics on YouTube.”













Up in the stands, reality quickly set in for Johnstone’s parents when an Oregon staff member came to escort them to the locker room. Johnstone’s mother, Wendy, didn’t know what to expect as they walked into the Astrodome’s lower levels. Their dread quickly turned to pride, however, when they found their lobbying to rejoin his teammates on the sideline so that he could cheer them on.

“We honestly expected him to be really upset,” Wendy Johnstone said. “I don’t want to say crying his eyes out, but we expected him to be pretty down and upset, my career is over, a sense of letting his team down. He was bummed, he was mad, but right away it was, ‘What do I need to do to get over this, and can I go back on the field to cheer on my teammates?’”

That Johnstone got hurt in Oregon’s final game of the season helped ease his emotional distress. His natural optimism kicked in as he looked ahead, knowing he had the entire offseason to heal and get back on the field without missing a game. He quickly underwent reconstructive surgery back in Eugene, his mom by his side, and began the rehabilitation process. Recovery times for ACL reconstruction vary, but when NFL All-Pro running back Adrian Peterson returned in less than seven months in 2012, he was hailed as a medical marvel.

“I wasn’t really too worried about it. Everyone comes back from ACLs nowadays,” Johnstone said. “I was pissed off and bummed out, but I had to go through the surgery and rehab process. It was a ‘you never think it’s going to happen to you’ kind of thing, but I was really optimistic.”

Johnstone had eight months from the moment he lay on the turf in San Antonio to accomplish his goal.

