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Ellis Johnson (defensive lineman)

All-American college football player, professional football player, defensive lineman, defensive tackle

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ5365919 ↗
Source-derived summary

Ellis Bernard Johnson (born October 30, 1973) is an American former professional football player who was a defensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL) for ten seasons during the 1990s and 2000s. Johnson played college football for the University of Florida, and was recognized as the National Defensive Player of the Year. He was selected in the first round of the 1995 NFL draft, and played professionally for the Indianapolis Colts, Atlanta Falcons and Denver Broncos of the NFL.

Early life

Johnson was born in Wildwood, Florida in 1973. He attended Wildwood High School, where he played high school football for the Wildwood Wildcats.

College career

Johnson accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where he played for coach Steve Spurrier's Florida Gators football team from 1991 to 1994. As a senior team captain on the Gators' 1994 Southeastern Conference (SEC) championship team, Johnson was a first-team All-SEC selection, an honorable mention All-American, and CNN's National Defensive Player of the Year; he was also selected by his Gators teammates as the team's most valuable player. He finished his four years as a Gator with 16.3 quarterback sacks and 26.8 tackles for a loss.

In a retrospective series published by The Gainesville Sun in 2006, Johnson was rated No. 32 among the top 100 Gators of the first 100 seasons of Florida football. He was inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a "Gator Great" in 2007.

Editorial summary

“Ellis Johnson (defensive lineman)” enters the record as all-American college football player, professional football player, defensive lineman, defensive tackle. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ellis, Johnson and defensive can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1973, 1995, 1991, 1994—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1973-10-30. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Ellis, Johnson and defensive.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Ellis Johnson (defensive lineman)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Ellis, Johnson and defensive provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5365919. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1995, 1991 and 1994.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ellis Johnson (defensive lineman)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ellis Johnson (defensive lineman) primary sources, Ellis Johnson (defensive lineman) archive and Ellis research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ellis Johnson (defensive lineman)”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ellis Johnson (defensive lineman)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.