It’s a common practice in the NFL for a newly-acquired player to buy a jersey number from a teammate, as we have seen plenty of examples of this. Guys go to their new team and want to wear the same number they’ve used in the past. Usually it’s just an issue of how much is a player willing to fork over for their coveted number.
Chris Johnson, former Tennessee Titan and NFL rushing leader, has been trying to figure out what number he would be wearing for the Jets. Johnson has worn the number 28 his entire NFL career, but was not able to do so with New York since that number is retired in honor of Curtis Martin. Instead of Johnson allowing that to make his life easier, he decided that he wanted to wear number 21, which was already taken by teammate Ellis Lankster.
But like most situations in the world today, money talks.
Yes I change my number can't say no to money who would
— Ellis Lankster31 (@EllisLankster21) May 11, 2014
Apparently, money isn’t an issue to Johnson. For whatever reason, he wanted the number 21 instead of any other available number, and was willing to pay Lankster for it.
Lankster will wear 31 in the future for the Jets. Let’s hope that works out for him better than the last guy who wore that number for New York.