His favorite games? Of course there's the NFC Championship to punch a ticket to Super Bowl 50, but two others stick out. The first was the 2014 NFC Wild Card victory against Arizona, when he posted two sacks to help the Panthers win their first postseason game since 2005. The week prior, after beating Atlanta to take the division, the usually reserved Johnson stood on a table in the victorious visitors' locker room and implored his teammates to not let that be the last win of the year.

The other game he mentioned was the 2012 gut-wrencher in the Georgia Dome. Johnson was unblockable in the game, recording 3.5 sacks. It was his best individual performance. But Carolina lost in the closing seconds after the Falcons completed a 59-yard Hail Mary to set up the winning field goal.

"That was a heartbreaker," Johnson said. "One of the toughest games."

Speaking of Atlanta, we'd be remiss if we didn't discuss the Georgia native's passion for playing the Falcons. Did we make too much of that storyline each year? It sounds like those games meant more to Johnson than we even knew.

"The Atlanta game was the only time my people back home that don't have cable can see me play," Johnson said. "It meant so much to me. I thrived playing against them more than anyone else."

Most memorable off-field moment? Johnson's mind immediately took him to the locker room in Seattle before a Sunday night game in 2016.

"A couple hours before we go out, I'm in the room with (Ryan) Kalil and Fernando (Velasco). I'm talking to them, and I get the call that my grandma just passed. I just burst out crying. Kalil and Fernando were there to console me… That was a hard game for me."