WACO, Texas — Brynn Johnson started her athletic training career and dream volunteering for her high school football team with the early hopes of becoming a sports medicine doctor.
Now, she has a Super Bowl ring to show for her efforts.
"I always wanted to help people, and between my first and second year of my Master's at Baylor, my program director was pushing me to see if athletic training was what I wanted to do," Johnson said.
After high school, Johnson went to a university in Michigan before transferring to Florida her junior year. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she looked at programs across the country before landing on Baylor University for a master's degree in Athletic Training.
Baylor gave Johnson the opportunity to work on the sidelines for the Bears in a Power Five conference. While in the area, she said the mom of an old Bears player approached her, introducing her to the athletic training program at Marlin ISD, where she would work for a year.
"Then Harvard called me and asked if I wanted to work for their program for men's and women's water polo and it broadened my horizons," Johnson said.
After a year, Johnson said she wanted to take another shot at the NFL and applied to all 32 teams.
"A couple non-answers, a couple of 'no's' and a couple of 'the position is already filled,'" Johnson said, describing the responses to her applications.
But ahead of the 2022-2023 season, Johnson got a call from the Detroit Lions for a seasonal athletic trainer position, giving her her first exposure to a full NFL season.
"It was a very different level and time-consuming when you're there for a full season, but I knew the NFL was for me," Johnson said.
After a season with the Lions, Johnson said a mix-up in staff was inevitable and she wanted another chance to be back on the field.
"I knew from working through the field that any team that is still working through the playoff didn't have the time to be looking for applicants," Johnson said.
Fresh off a Super Bowl victory against the Philadelphia Eagles, Johnson got a call from the Kansas City Chiefs for another seasonal position. Going from the NFC to the AFC intrigued Johnson, so in April of 2023 she made the jump.
"It was something that I had to learn here that was a dichotomy," Johnson said. "The longevity of a season and what it takes to play for 21 weeks and have success for 21 weeks, it's so different."
A grind, as Johnson described it, for everyone in the organization that takes "showing up every day" to be successful.
"Our job is eliminating those distractions and obstacles for those players when the level of expectation is so high," Johnson said.
Through the peaks and valleys of the season, Johnson said the community of athletic trainers was always working through the checks and balances of the grueling life of the NFL season.
"We have to know how to control what we do in our job," Johnson said. "We were banged up all season and it's 'How do we get these players back on the field and how do we get them to play?'"
The team finished with an 11-6 record and made it all the way to the Super Bowl against the San Francisco 49ers. Johnson said aside from a couple of minor injuries, the team persevered through an up-and-down game.
"You can't get caught up in the game, you have to make sure players are getting hydrated and that they have what they need to get out on the field," Johnson said.
As the final overtime ticked down and the Chiefs secured the 25 to 22 victory, Johnson said she was "awestruck" in the moment.
"You have all of these emotions come to your head, just relief, elated and kind of awestruck that, like, 'We did it', underneath it all you see the emotions of the players and their faces when you see their hard work and they get to the game and they play in it and win," Johnson said.
With a return to the Chiefs athletic training staff for a second year and move into a full-time salary position on the table, Johnson said she's currently weighing her options.
Johnson had some advice for anyone looking to get into the business of the NFL in athletic training.
"Be willing to learn, you're never done learning and you're always picking up new techniques, new everything and have a passion for what you're doing," Johnson said.
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