ATLANTA — When Los Angeles Rams safety John Johnson III was a kid, his father — the man he looked up to — told him something he never forgot.

“When you make it,” his namesake said, “you better make sure you put the third on the back of your jersey. Otherwise I’m taking all your stuff.”

And Johnson, a blossoming football player in middle school at the time, eventually came to realize something.

“He was joking,” Johnson told Yahoo Sports with a laugh. “But he kind of wasn’t.”

View photos The Rams’ John Johnson III fulfilled a childhood demand his father made of him. (Getty Images) More

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To Johnson’s father, the opportunity to one day see his son rock a nameplate that read “JOHNSON III” above an NFL jersey number was about more than a shoutout. It was a reminder that his son isn’t forgetting where he came from, or the family he represents.

So after playing college ball at Boston College — where they don’t include names on the back of their jerseys — the son could hardly wait to heed his dad’s words. As soon as he joined the Rams as a third-round draft pick in 2017, he donned a nameplate that read “JOHNSON III,” much to his father’s delight.

And Johnson won’t be the only player wearing a nameplate that includes a generational suffix on Super Bowl Sunday, either. Six players on the Rams and New England Patriots will do so, all of whom are part of a league-wide trend that has grown as several African-American players have requested that “Sr.,” “Jr.,” “II” or the “III” be listed after their surnames on their jerseys.

And when asked by Yahoo Sports this week, all six of the players who will wear generational nameplates on Sunday — Johnson III, Dante Fowler Jr., Todd Gurley II, Rodger Safford III, Deatrich Wise Jr. and Reginald “Duke” Dawson Jr. — made it clear that their reasons for doing so go beyond vanity, or a desire to follow the trend.

“It’s way deeper than that,” Johnson said. “Your family brought you up, and it takes a village [to raise a child]. There’s a bunch of factors that go into the man that you become.”

And one of them, clearly, is a father’s presence. Here are the stories of the other five players, and why they choose to honor their dads in the same way:

View photos Rams defensive end Dante Fowler added “Jr.” to his name plate during his collegiate playing days at Florida. (AP) More

Rams DE Dante Fowler Jr.

The fourth-year veteran doesn’t know anyone else who loves football more than his father, so wearing the name his dad passed down every Sunday is a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly.

“I’m in my situation because I’m living my dad’s dream out,” Fowler said. “So all the hard work we’ve put in since I was 4 or 5 years old.”

Fowler’s dad pushed the sport on his son, and spoke his career into existence. All of it — from Dante Jr. growing to be 6-foot-3 and 255 pounds, to him earning a football scholarship to Florida, to him becoming the third overall pick in the 2015 NFL draft, even to him playing in the Super Bowl one day.

That belief is why, even six years ago, Fowler was so happy to add “Jr.” to the back of his nameplate in a game against LSU his sophomore year at Florida. The moment he saw it, Fowler snapped a picture and sent it to his dad.

“He was like, ‘I’m proud of you — that’s crazy, you’ve came a long way,’ ” Fowler recalled. “That meant the world to me.”

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