Will Johnson had to wait an extra 24 hours for his draft day moment after the once projected top 10 pick slid all the way out of the first round and even a little later into the second round. It wasn't until the No. 47 pick in the second round that the Arizona Cardinals finally made Johnson's NFL dream come true.
Throughout the first round of the NFL Draft, analysts were shocked at the fact that Johnson was still on the board even later in the night, and even with the injury concern, thought a team would take a chance. However, it came out that the knee injury was what concerned teams most and was the key reason as to why they didn't want to draft Johnson.
Arizona showed that they were willing to take the chance with the Johnson by drafting him in the second round, and some at ESPN are saying that he was the total steal from the draft.
ESPN's Matt Miller names Will Johnson the second-best pick in the draft
After the draft, analysts are going to look through every pick by every team and see which players may be flops, and which players that went late are going to shine bright as stars. The biggest topic everyone loves to talk about is which later picks were steals for teams.
Johnson seems to be a popular pick for most analysts as one of the steals of the draft, but ESPN's Matt Miller took it one step further, saying that Johnson was the second-best pick in the entire 2025 NFL Draft.
"This is one of the steals (Johnson) of the draft as far as value, as he was taken 40 spots lower than I had him ranked," Miller said on ESPN.
Miller talked while Johnson may not have wanted to slide as late as he did in the draft, being selected into Cardinals' head coach Jonathon Gannon's system will benefit him in the long run and fit him the best. Johnson has been clear that he is planning to use his draft slide as motivation in his NFL career to show the other 31 teams what they missed out on.