{"id":20180,"date":"2025-09-23T23:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/rudi-johnson-former-cincinnati-bengals-running-back-dies-aged-45\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T23:20:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T23:20:00","slug":"rudi-johnson-former-cincinnati-bengals-running-back-dies-aged-45","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/rudi-johnson-former-cincinnati-bengals-running-back-dies-aged-45\/","title":{"rendered":"Rudi Johnson: Former Cincinnati Bengals running back dies aged 45"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Former Cincinnati Bengals running back Rudi Johnson has died at the age of 45. <\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Johnson was a fourth-round draft pick in 2001 and played seven seasons with the Bengals, setting the franchise&#8217;s single-season record with 1,458 rushing yards in 2005.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He joined the Detroit Lions for one season in 2008 before announcing his retirement from the NFL, ending his career with 5,979 rushing yards and 51 touchdowns. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bengals president Mike Brown said Johnson was a &#8220;fine person and an excellent running back for us&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added: &#8220;He was dependable and productive as a player, and very popular among his team-mates. Everyone liked him and saw him as a dear friend. We are deeply saddened by his passing.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Johnson, whose full name was Burudi Ali Johnson, ranks fourth on Cincinnati&#8217;s all-time rushing list behind Corey Dillon, James Brooks and Joe Mixon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/american-football\/articles\/cp987d0xn4eo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Cincinnati Bengals running back Rudi Johnson has died at the age of 45. Johnson was a fourth-round draft pick in 2001 and played seven seasons with the Bengals, setting the franchise&#8217;s single-season record with 1,458 rushing yards in 2005. He joined the Detroit Lions for one season in 2008 before announcing his retirement from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20182,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20180\/revisions\/20182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}