Jermaine Johnson came to UGA after a successful JUCo career at  Independence Community College where he earned recognition as the number one defensive end. After arriving at UGA Johnson quickly established himself as a starter on one of Georgia’s best-ever defensive units.

Johnson was asked how the recent shootings have affected him as a native of Minnesota whose family lives in the same area as Minneapolis victim, George Floyd.

“The last few weeks have been really hard just to see everything that is going on in the news and everything. I think it has struck me, as well as all of my teammates, really hard—white or black because we are united here. We are brothers—those type of issues affect all of us. In terms of what we are doing, we as a team—team and staff—we had a very productive talk in the past couple of days. Coach Smart just let us come up and share how we are feeling. We actually had whiteboards—I think it was a three-hour meeting—just to get a bunch of things off of our chests. Just talking as a team and as a program on what we can do to make not only ourselves feel safe but other people feel safe out in the world and in the community.”