September 29, 2025
By Ian Toner

How many of you, before the first pull of 2025, had Tannor Johnson-Go winning "Defensive Player of the Year"? No, really: Please raise your hands.

There’s no question Johnson-Go has been a supremely talented player at every stage of his career. Just look at the high school, youth club, international, semi-pro (MLU) and club titles–and 2024 Ultiworld Player of the Year Award–amassed in his trophy case.

Defense just hasn’t been where his coaches have deployed him most frequently, especially in the professional game. That is, until the Glory coaching staff had an idea before the 2025 season.

Tannor Johnson-Go UFA career stats

*playoff career high

“I'm sure people from the outside would assume that it was an arduous process to convince one of the best offensive players in the world to switch to D line,” said Glory coach Sam Lehman, described by others on Boston’s staff as the hardest working coach in ultimate. “But that just wasn't the case at all [...] Tannor was super on board with [our vision before the season]. In our convos, he emphasized how he was excited to get to work on a part of his game he hadn’t made a priority for many years. It was probably the easiest role-swap conversation I’ve ever had with a player.”

“Tannor has always been a player to absorb and implement quickly, regardless of the schemes,” said Ben Sadok, whose playing days with Johnson-Go date back to their time on Massachusetts Zoodisc in college. “We started on offense together and as the offense changed, he adapted quickly. When he moved to D this year, I had no worries that he would adapt again well and make it even easier for our defense to perform together.”

“I think everyone knows I played a decade of offense and the switch to D is not an easy task,” Johnson-Go said during 2025 Championship Weekend. “I don't think there was a single game that we went in that I wasn't confident in the coaching staff's scouting report and what we were going to do. When you're that confident in the people above you, it's so easy to execute. There are so many little things you don't need to think about because you're just so locked in and you trust their judgment."

“Tannor’s positional discipline transformed from previous years,” said Bryan Jones, UFA analyst and former title-winning coach of the New York Empire. “He’s always been athletic, but he was able to get blocks others couldn’t but was still chasing. He’s now able to take tougher matchups and win them.”

“Tannor has evolved into a multi-tool threat since 2022,” said New York Empire handler and former Callahan winner John Randolph, whose rivalry with Johnson-Go stretches back to college battles between UMass and Brown in the late 2010s. “He has always been the big guy who could dominate deep and reshape the field, but in recent years he's added tools to his belt to make himself much more rounded and dangerous in more ways. In particular, he's leveled up his defense to become someone who can lock down matchups downfield or in the handler set, see the field, direct the defense, and provide smart help when needed.”

“When Tannor was on the field, we were careful to avoid throwing floaty discs in his vicinity or errant deep balls because he's got a great nose for them, on both O and D,” Randolph added.

“And I mean, what D coach wouldn't want to have Tannor on their line,” Lehman asked. “He's an athletic monster with incredible foot speed that finishes plays deep and can drive an offense on the turn. The question was never about whether putting him on D would work, it was just about figuring out the best possible role to give him to let his myriad skills shine fully.”

“We definitely talked a lot about honing some of his instincts and being able to read the game faster to build a more intuitive sense of where the disc is going two or three throws ahead,” Lehman added. “He has such incredible playmaking ability when he gets a chance at a block, so we needed to make sure he was doing the 'pre-work' defensively to get himself in the right spot to make the play. Those types of instincts really can only come with hours spent playing D line and he just hadn't had that in a while.”

“As an example, we would watch film where he'd miss a layout D or get beat on a slash cut from the stack,” Lehman continued. “Instead of fixating on the pursuit angle he should take to make that specific play, we'd rewind the tape and look at his positioning and orbiting one or two throws earlier. Where were his hips pointing? Was he staring at the disc or locked in only on his matchup? Was he properly triangulated? Was he aware of the help he had from a certain part of the field that could've allowed him to set up in a different spot? As we talked more and more about this stuff in the film room, I'd see him implement it on the field in practice, and eventually have it pay off in games.”

Beyond setting and tying regular season and playoff career highs in defensive points played, blocks and assists, Johnson-Go simply made the D lines he stepped onto the field with better. Boston’s championship winning defense converted at higher rates, both on the whole and in the red zone, with Johnson-Go.

Statistics courtesy of Shown Space

“Tannor brought a level of consistency to the Glory D-line,” DC Breeze Head Coach Lauren Boyle said. “He has a wide variety of tools from his throwing arsenal and spaces he can attack that made it hard to get the disc back.”

“His offensive prowess was a huge value add for our D line but he has been a strong defender his whole career, given his stature and athleticism,” Sadok added. “He made other teams have to adjust their play and that is the best compliment you can get as a player.”

Johnson-Go’s special ability to quarterback the counterattack with ruthless efficiency was on full display at Championship Weekend, with his end of quarter heroics in the semifinals (en route to a victory that featured eight Glory breaks) and playoff career-high 33 completions in the finals (en route to a two-goal win).

“No credit to me,” Johnson-Go added at Championship Weekend, when asked about his defensive growth and impact weeks before the media voted on the 2025 DPOTY award. “That goes to our coaching staff, that goes to Sam [Lehman], that goes to Jake [Smart], that goes to Sam [Rosenthal]. They saw the vision and they coached me through every step. We're having weekly calls. We're talking about positioning, who I'm good at matching, what we're getting out of it. So I'm really just prioritizing what the coaches are telling me. And on a turn, I know how to play offense, so I just gotta help the D line get it into the end zone.”

“I'd be remiss not to mention how big Tannor’s pulls were for us,” Lehman said. “Since I've been coaching Glory, we've never had a puller like Tannor. He got us multiple breaks by pulling deep and letting our handler defenders immediately start with pressure that led to punt turnovers. That was huge for us, especially during Championship Weekend.”

“I would never characterize Tannor as a role player,” Glory Head Coach Sam Rosenthal said during Championship Weekend press conferences. “He's such an important player for us [...] the reality of having a deep, strong team is everybody's giving up touches [...] when our D line is maybe slowing down a bit when we have the ball, we're all yelling, ‘Tannor! We need ya!’ Tannor's one of the best players in the league."

“I remember being in a leadership call halfway through our season,” Lehman recounted. “We were talking about personnel and Brendan McCann kind of paused the conversation to be like, ‘Does Tannor know he's the best player on this team? Can we make sure he knows that?’ Obviously, we had a ton of great players on our team this year but at many, many critical points in our season, what Brendan said was true. We don't win this city's first championship without Tannor.”

While his coaches and captains may be biased, the sentiments above are still incredible compliments considering the 2025 Glory roster featured former UFA MVP and champion Jeff Babbitt and the latest MVP in Tobe Decraene, among other standouts.

“It was incredibly selfless for Tannor to take this new role with such grace and enthusiasm,” Lehman added. “He really committed to a process of putting in the work to make himself a better player. And in turn, he made our entire team better and raised our ceiling massively. I think we're all so grateful for what he did for us this year and, looking back, all of the work he has done over multiple seasons to help build the Glory program.”