Johnstone Should Have Been a Raider Start to Finish

It’s a shame that defensive end Lance Johnstone didn’t play his entire career with the Oakland Raiders.

The Silver and Black selected the 6-5 250-pound Johnstone in the second round (No. 57 overall) of the 1996 National Football League Draft out of Temple and stepped right in by starting ten games as a rookie and soon becoming a full-time starter.

At Temple, Johnstone played his final three seasons as a linebacker and served as team captain in 1994 and 1995. He left Temple with the school record in solo tackles with 288 and set a single-game school record with 15 solo tackles in a game against Pitt as a junior.

“Despite playing as a linebacker in college, the Raiders turned Johnstone into a defensive end and reaped the benefits,” Just Blog Baby wrote. “At 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds, he was a dominating physical presence that was capable of playing the run, as well as pinning his ears back and getting after the quarterback.”

In 87 career games with the Raiders, Johnstone finished with 31 sacks and recorded 19 tackles for losses, 11 forced fumbles, and four quarterback hits. Johnstone spent six of his 11 seasons with the Raiders, and the other five came with the Minnesota Vikings. His career totals are 72 sacks and 57 tackles for losses in 166 games.

Johnstone stood out in Raiders training camp in Napa, and he and the coaching staff both saw it.

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— Hondo Carpenter (@HondoCarpenter) August 23, 2023

“I’m coming along a little bit faster than I thought I would,” Johnstone told the San Francisco Examiner. “I still have to work on reading some of my keys. I haven’t been used to doing that as a lineman. But other than that, I’m doing all right.”

Said Mike White, the Raiders coach at the time: “I see in him what our scouts thought. He has tremendous acceleration. … I see tremendous potential in that area.”

Johnstone stood out in his first five seasons and should have been a Raider for life. However, Coach Lane Kiffin released Johnson in 2007 in one of his first significant moves with the Silver and Black, one of many he has been criticized for.

Johnstone went on to show he had plenty left in the tank with the Vikings.

“I think Lance Johnstone just overran three or four sacks in some games because he was so quick out of his stance,” said Jon Gruden, who also coached Johnstone with the Raiders. “But overall, his play has been exceptional. He’s one of the best defensive ends in the National Football League.

“He gave us some incredible play off the end of our defense and the Raiders should never have let him go.”

For some reason, Kiffin and the Raiders let him go, and with the Vikings, he recorded 42 more sacks and 169 total tackles in five seasons.

Johnstone’s best seasons came when he had 11 sacks for the Raiders in 1998, 10 the next season and seven for the Vikings in 2002, 10 in 2003, 11 the following year, and 7.5 in 2003.

When he returned to the Raiders in 2006, he started only one game and had two sacks.

“The average career for players is three or four years,” Johnstone said when he finally called it a career. “I’ve been blessed to make it this far, but it’s not going to last forever. So I jumped at a chance to start a business.”

Again, it’s simply too bad that Johnstone didn’t spend his entire career in Silver and Black, and you can blame Lane Kiffin for that.

The Silver and Black open the regular season at the Denver Broncos on Sunday, September 10, at 4:25 p.m. EDT/1:25 p.m. PDT.

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