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The 15-year-old was exhausted, sitting beneath the tree next to the field at a high school in Atlanta, shielding himself from the sun and dreaming of Gatorade after forgetting his water bottle in the hotel.

He had traveled all night from Cincinnati to take part in these offensive linemen workouts filled with mostly NFL players and college guys, while he had just learned days before from his high school coach he was being moved to offensive line himself. Technique? He had no idea offensive linemen had such a thing. He let the others go first in every drill, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do. It didn't help. He kicked cones. He looked lost.

Willie Anderson, the retired Pro Bowl tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals who was running the workout, just shook his head.

"Oh my God," Anderson thought to himself. "This is awful. This is terrible."

Anderson's fear was that the kid, pushing 6-foot-6, was going into his senior year of high school. He walked up to Paris Johnson Jr. while Johnson sat under the tree, to ask if that was so. No sir, came the reply. I'm going into 10^th grade.

"Thank God," Anderson told him. "If you were going into your senior year, I was going to say get ready to get some student loans. Because that was awful.

"But you've got a chance."

Anderson has been teaching offensive linemen for years now. Johnson has emerged as one of his prized pupils, unrecognizable from the ugly performance of that first day. The Cardinals left tackle, the sixth pick of the 2023 draft, has only improved since he entered the NFL. He has made no secret that he wants to reach elite status, and getting there in Year 3 of his career dovetails nicely with the ascension of the team built by GM Monti Ossenfort and coach Jonathan Gannon.

It is fitting too, given that he was the first of their draft picks, a foundational piece of the new regime.

Johnson is far from those humble beginnings in the Atlanta humidity, his future screaming anything but NFL star.

"I would've been the worst ranked offensive lineman in the world that first day in Atlanta," Johnson said. "To continually work to get to this (level) … I've always had a standard at being great at what I do."

The names of the best tackles in the NFL are well known. Trent Williams. Lane Johnson. Tristan Wirfs. Getting to that point isn't necessarily about a clear to-do list. Inside the game, players know what offensive linemen are supposed to do, but even the players don't always know what the assignment might be. To judge linemen when one is outside of the game is that much more difficult.

Anderson was a three-time first-team All-Pro with the Bengals and made four Pro Bowls, but his first acknowledgment for either didn't come until his eighth season. He played for a struggling team in Cincinnati, before the age of social media.

Johnson is seen by many more these days. There is a cottage industry of various offensive linemen film breakdowns and attempted analytics that can help make the "elite" case. But Anderson said the basic mindset – if you see other players in the offseason, you want to be able to hold your head high for your performance regardless of team success – remains.

"When your film is turned on, you want people around the league to say, 'Win or lose, he's playing his ass off,'" Anderson said.

Cardinals offensive line coach Justin Frye is in his first season with the team after coming from Ohio State – where he coached Johnson in Johnson's final season as a Buckeye. Johnson was always the hardest-working player he had in Columbus, Frye said, but he can see his transition into becoming a professional.

"It's the old saying, 'If you're good, you tell people about yourself, if you're great, other people tell you about it,'" Frye said. "The elite players, when you watch the tape, the good is the good and then there are the flashes of 'Man, not a lot of people do that.'

"He is working daily to get to that level. When you press play and watch the tape, it's noticeable."

Anderson didn't know about Johnson until his brother, Floyd Walker, showed up with him nearly a decade ago. Walker, a pastor in the Cincinnati area, was a family friend of Johnson and his mother, Monica Daniels.

Johnson had been a defensive lineman as a high school freshman. When his coach told him of his switch to offense after class one day, Johnson accepted it. A day or two later, he and his mother were in the local mall talking to Walker, who said "I know a guy that can help you."

He didn't mention that it was Anderson, the longtime Bengals star. But Walker had earned Daniels' trust enough that she told Johnson to take the road trip and skip some school. Johnson and Walker made the seven-hour drive to Atlanta through the night, and Johnson had his infamous first workout.

Johnson and Walker stayed at Anderson's house for the week. Each morning, Anderson would wake to find Johnson looking over his memorabilia.

"Every morning he had a thousand questions for me," Anderson said. "He was basically trying to get all my years of experience in football within one week."

Johnson just saw the "thousand cleats, the thousand helmets, the thousand jerseys" and understood the knowledge it all represented. At one point, Johnson admired Anderson's Pro Bowl jersey from 2008. Anderson told him he could have it. It hangs in Johnson's house today.

On his recent podcast, Anderson hosted Lane Johnson, the star Eagles right tackle. Johnson spoke about his struggles as a rookie, the light fully coming on at the end of his second season, and then his success.

Anderson said he had a similar learning curve. And why he thinks Paris Johnson now should be in the same position.

While Pro Football Focus grades – like any grading system for offensive linemen outside of each team – can be subjective, Johnson jumped when he moved to the left side last season, his 80.9 overall grade the highest among all left tackles in their first or second season.

He only allowed a QB knockdown on 1.0 percent of his blocking snaps, fifth in the league.

"I love having Paris on my blind side," quarterback Kyler Murray said. "He doesn't get the notoriety that he will, not necessarily deserve yet but I think he'll get there. I think he can definitely be the best tackle in the league. He's got the traits. That just comes with growth, confidence and going out and doing it. I think people will soon realize what he is capable of."

Anderson still sees clips of Johnson once in a while. Before training camp, Johnson sent Anderson a long text, telling him thank you again and that from the beginning, it was Anderson who had believed in his promise the most.

Given how rough it had gone on that sweaty day in Georgia all those years ago, it would've been fair to wonder.

Now, though, Johnson has the chance to reach that elite level he has craved for all these years.

"I feel I know what it is like to be at the top in my game and how I rank in terms of the rest of the country going back to high school and college," Johnson said. "It's been put on film, the guys before me have done it and done it consistently. They show what it takes to be in the conversation to being the best overall lineman each year. I feel I know the standard I have for myself and what it feels like and I know what it looks like.

"When I do it and I feel it consistently for myself and I come off the field feeling that way, the world will feel the same way about it."