Chris Johnson’s ALS diagnosis announcement on GMA hits home for Titans community with staggering rarity with teammate Tim Shaw
Former Titans great Chris Johnson is fighting for his life, now battling ALS as it tries to steal his bodily function from him. He gave a brave interview to Good Morning America on Monday to update the world on his condition.
Chris Johnson, the former Tennessee Titans running back and one of only nine NFL players to rush for 2,000 yards in a season, announced on Good Morning America on Monday that he has been diagnosed with ALS.
The news is devastating for the Titans community, and the connection between Johnson and former teammate Tim Shaw, who was diagnosed with ALS 12 years ago at age 29, makes it all the more staggering.
Johnson, who will turn 41 in September, shared the diagnosis publicly in his GMA interview with fellow NFL great Michael Strahan. The interview first aired Monday at 8:13 am ET, and will air locally in Nashville at 8:13 am CT.
“First, I want people to know I’m still me,” Johnson opened with. “ALS has changed what my body can do, but it hasn’t changed who I am.”
He first noticed weakness in his right hand in 2025, unable to grip or lift weights like he used to. When he and his wife consulted doctors, they hoped it would turn out to be anything else. But the ALS diagnosis was positive.
“They told us about medication that might extend my life for a few months. Then they told us to get our affairs in order,” the Johnson’s shared. But today, he is working with leading medical professionals in their field to slow the progress of the disease.
His specific diagnosis is Sporadic ALS, the most common type that occurs randomly in people with no known family history of ALS. “I don’t think you ever truly process it,” Johnson admitted. “But you have two choices: you can give up, or you can fight. I chose to fight.”
He told Strahan that the disease has progressed much faster than he could have ever imagined. “Just over a year ago, I was picking up my 7-year-old daughter to make a wish on her birthday cake. Today, I couldn’t do that.” Chris Johnson and his wife Brittany gave this interview in their own home, with Chris now communicating via a speech generating machine by using his eyes. The artificial voice is an AI version of Chris’s own, which they recorded shortly after his diagnosis.
For anyone who watched CJ2K during his Tennessee years, the cruelty of ALS attacking the fastest, twitchiest, most explosive runner of his era is hard to wrap your head around. This was a player who could rip off two 80-yard touchdown runs in a single game. Nobody could catch him. And now he’s fighting a disease that attacks the very muscles that made him superhuman.
Chris Johnson’s overlooked NFL legacy with the Titans
Johnson is vastly overlooked in NFL history, and I think it’s because his peak was so condensed and on a team without any postseason success. One twisted ankle could have altered everything.
He became the sixth NFL running back to rush for 2,000 yards in a season, and he did it while also catching passes for over 500 yards, totaling over 2,500 yards from scrimmage (also an NFL record). He was essentially the entire Titans offense that year, functioning as the second or third leading receiver on the team while carrying the rushing load.
I still think about that final game of the 2009 regular season against the Seahawks in Seattle. The Titans were already eliminated, and there was a ticky-tack holding call on fullback Ahmad Hall that wiped out a classic CJ big-time touchdown run early in the game. Jeff Fisher and others have talked about it before. If that run had stood, they would have gone for Eric Dickerson’s record. And with a back who could break off two 80-yard scores against the Jacksonville Jaguars in a single afternoon, I don’t know that Dickerson’s record would have survived.
All six of his Titans seasons were an actual blaze. CJ2K averaged over 1,600 yards from scrimmage across that stretch. All six years topped 1,000 rushing yards.
He and LenDale White formed the “Smash and Dash” duo in 2008 that helped carry Tennessee to the AFC’s top playoff seed. A lot of people in the Titans’ building during that time believe the Baltimore Ravens had to take Johnson out — twisting his ankle in the first quarter of the divisional round at Nissan Stadium — to beat them. If the Titans win that game on Jan. 10, 2009, they host the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship Game, a Steelers team they had already beaten earlier that season. That Steelers team went on to win the Super Bowl. The butterfly effect of that one ankle-turn is wild.
After those six years, Johnson never topped 1,000 rushing yards again with the New York Jets or Arizona Cardinals. It was so quick that people forgot how dominant he was.
Shaw, Johnson: Extraordinary rarity of teammates with young ALS diagnoses
The most staggering part of all this is the connection to Tim Shaw.
Johnson and Shaw were Titans teammates for three consecutive seasons in 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Only 31 players were on the Titans roster for all three of those years.
The odds of two men from a group of 31 both being diagnosed with ALS by age 40 is an unfathomably low chance, given that an ALS diagnosis over a lifetime is 1 in 400 people. Any diagnosis 40-years-old or younger is deemed scientifically rare. Most diagnoses happen between the ages of 55-75. Ninety percent of ALS cases are sporadic, meaning there is no connection any genetic cause or family history.
Shaw was diagnosed 12 years ago and remains a fixture at the Titans facility as a beloved part of the organization to this day. Late last season the Titans blocked their first punt since Shaw got one in 2012. Fassel credited Shaw’s current presence in special team meetings to this day.
If any NFL player has to go through this, being in the same city and the same franchise as Tim Shaw is about as strong a foundation as you could ask for.
Johnson has twin middle school aged sons, CJ and Kaden, who based on Chris’s Instagram posts, look like they’re about to be college recruits before you know it. Those kids are fast, too, and already competing in All-American camps.
Nobody wants this for Chris Johnson and his family. But he’s got a pretty good teammate to lean on. Hopefully Johnson and Shaw can keep making an impact together.