All roads lead to the sea for Jarret Johnson. The unassuming Ravens linebacker grew up on the water under a legacy of Florida fishermen, realized his worst fear there and now is being drawn back again.

From his great-grandfather on down, men in the Johnson family have always worked on the water - first as net fishermen and later as commercial crabbers - around Cedar Key, an island community three miles off the Florida coast in the Gulf of Mexico.

Johnson is perhaps the most unsung player on one of the NFL's most heralded defenses. He just completed his seventh NFL season as the Ravens fell short of Sunday's AFC championship game. But any recounting of Johnson's football career requires a trip through his Gulf Coast past and the lifestyle that shaped him.

He is the first male on his father's side not to make a living at sea.

"First of all, it's a lot of hard work," he said of life on the water. "It's just you. You're on the water. It's all about your knowledge, your ability. Your hard work is going to get you through. You have no co-workers. That independence built a lot in me, and also an appreciation for where I am today.

"I appreciate it because I've seen the type of money a crabber makes. And it's rough."

Johnson, 28, makes an NFL's defensive starter's salary instead. He is one of the great Ravens success stories: a fourth-round draft pick in 2003, too small to play the position he played at Alabama - defensive tackle - and, until he dropped 25 pounds, too big to play linebacker.

He has not missed a game since 2003, playing in the past 97 regular-season contests. This season, he played through a torn labrum that will require surgery on Tuesday, a separated shoulder, and assorted back and knee injuries. Yet for the third straight year, Johnson was knocking at the Pro Bowl door with two interceptions, one forced fumble, six sacks and 70 tackles.

Born in Homestead, Fla., Johnson lives in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He was the only two-time captain in Alabama history, and even there Johnson remains something of a mystery.

"They'll ask me what I'm doing these days," he said. "When I say I'm still playing, they say, 'With who?' "

But in Cedar Key (population of less than 1,000), where his family moved when he was 2, Johnson is still revered as one of their own, a local hero.

In fact, Johnson is one of the league's toughest players - he has become more of a playmaker each season at strong-side linebacker - as well as one of its most considerate and courteous personalities. His selfless, team-first attitude shines through the maze of bloated egos that routinely fill NFL locker rooms.

"He has a heart for people," says his mother, Aida Johnson, a wound specialist at a hospital in Ocala, Fla. "I think that's very important. You grow up with a lot of people just like you when you grow up in a small town. The social [activity] was church and school. You didn't go to the movies because the nearest one was 50 miles away. Life was very close. It made for a good upbringing."

Or it did until his father went out on the water for crabs in early August 1989 and didn't come back. A week shy of his 8th birthday, Johnson couldn't fathom why Ludwig Johnson, 46, failed to return.

"I just thought we couldn't get him on the radio," Jarret Johnson said. "He'd go out, way offshore, and stay overnight sometimes. We lost contact with him. They found the boat, but they never found him."

The boat was on the bottom of the gulf, and it took young Johnson's heart with it.

"He hated the water at that time," said his mother, who went back to nursing school and got a job while holding her family of two children together.

When Johnson decided he wanted to play football, his mother moved him and sister Mary Beth to the inland town of Chiefland.

One of Ludwig Johnson's best friends, Perry Rogers, came down from the Alaska oil rigs when he got the news and immediately became the father figure Johnson was missing. "He basically raised me; I never met him before," Johnson said. "I was with him 90 percent of the time I wasn't with my mom."

Along the way, Johnson lost the passion for the water that had held his family for decades.

"For a while, I had a lot of resentment," he said. "I would tell people I was from Chief-land [and not Cedar Key]. I had a little boat and stuff, but I had no interest in working on the water, no love of fishing."

Then, two years ago, well into his NFL career, Johnson was pulled back to the gulf. His mother had moved to Gainesville and worked in Ocala. Rogers was dying of cancer, and Johnson started going home more often to see him.

"All of a sudden, it felt like that's where he really belonged," Aida Johnson said. "He had gotten back on the water, started looking into fishing again."

When Johnson went back, he also found a book that held his father's fishing logs. Ludwig Johnson was well-known in Cedar Key because he not only crabbed, but also was a fishing guide and a fireman, and wrote a fishing report for the local paper.

"I got that book with all his logs and learned more about him," Jarret Johnson said. "I think that was a big part of wanting to go back, learning about it, realizing how much he loved the water."

Now, even as Johnson works hard to become a better linebacker, he has started to plan for life after football. He and his wife, Anna, recently bought property in Niceville, Fla., right on the water. This offseason he plans to build his dock, and next offseason he'll start on the house.

When his career is over, Johnson wants to become a high school football coach and get his captain's license to be a guide on the water like his father.

Johnson's life is coming full circle.

"It's my retirement plan," he said brightly. "I want to work on the water now. But I don't want to depend on it for a living."

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