Johnson gave Goff a voice. He was “actually interested by what I believed and what I appreciated,” Goff stated that spring, and that collaborative strategy helped flip the Lions from a 3-13-1 group in 2021 right into a 12-5 division champion this season. Detroit’s offense completed among the many NFL’s high 5 in yards and scoring in each of Johnson’s seasons as coordinator, and the 2023 group ended a 32-year playoff victory drought.
“He’s one of many most important the explanation why I’ve had the success that I’ve been capable of have,” vast receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown stated of Johnson. “… He’s a superb thoughts and one of many hardest-working coaches I’ve ever been round. And as gamers, we belief him. We all know that no matter he says, we really feel prefer it’s going to work.”
As Johnson constructed up his quarterback and his group, he additionally constructed his personal repute as a savvy play caller and revered instructor. As soon as a little-known place coach who jumped from the faculty ranks to the NFL, he’s now a coveted head coach candidate. In an period when NFL groups are chasing prodigies such because the Los Angeles Rams’ Sean McVay and the Miami Dolphins’ Mike McDaniel, Johnson, 37, could be the following younger, analytically pushed play caller to make the leap.
Cam Sexton remains to be stunned Johnson turned to teaching after their years collectively as quarterbacks on the College of North Carolina. “For those who requested me again then, what would Ben Johnson be doing immediately, I’d [have said] he would almost certainly be engaged on the Artemis program at NASA,” Sexton stated.
Johnson graduated close to the highest of his class at A.C. Reynolds Excessive in Asheville, N.C., and helped the soccer group to a state championship as a quarterback. However he didn’t get school appears to be like or scholarship provides. So he walked on at North Carolina in 2004 and spent three years because the Tar Heels’ third-string quarterback whereas learning arithmetic and pc science. He loved writing pc video games — he as soon as constructed a hockey recreation, Sexton recalled — and fixing advanced math equations.
“Ben actually is uncommonly shiny,” stated John Shoop, his offensive coordinator and place coach at UNC in 2007. “However … he additionally has frequent sense and interpersonal abilities to go together with it.”
On the sphere, Johnson earned solely particular groups snaps, however he immersed himself in UNC’s offensive scheme — together with each different group’s. Chris Allen, the Tar Heels’ video coordinator, recalled Johnson “at all times” being within the video room, usually sitting alone and watching recreation tape, cut-ups of particular situations, scouting studies and even movie that required Allen to dig via the archives. “Couldn’t eliminate him,” Allen recalled.
Johnson was sometimes UNC’s scout group quarterback, however Chase Rice, Johnson’s teammate in highschool and a linebacker at North Carolina, stated that’s not how he checked out his function. “He was it like he’s going to make us higher,” Rice stated. “I bear in mind him operating the scout group, and he knew extra in regards to the different group’s offense than we did.”
John Bunting, the Tar Heels’ coach from 2000 to 2006, stated Johnson was extra like a graduate assistant than a backup. He wore a headset on recreation days and signaled in performs from the sideline. However a much less technical side of the sport lured Johnson into teaching; he has credited Shoop as his inspiration for the way to deal with different employees and gamers. It was in regards to the relationships.
“He’s a type of guys that most likely may have gone on to get his PhD or one thing,” Shoop stated. “I’m undecided he even knew if he had the [coaching] bug or not. Clearly once we have been collectively, one thing began percolating.”
Johnson’s first job was as a graduate assistant at Boston School in 2009. To streamline the play-calling and assist the quarterbacks set up their ideas on the sphere, Johnson color-coded the offensive coordinator’s play sheet and the quarterbacks’ wristbands. Blue indicated one personnel grouping; pink signified one other.
Two years later, Boston School introduced in a brand new coordinator, Kevin Rogers. He had spent half a decade within the NFL, teaching Brett Favre in Minnesota, and he introduced the Vikings’ West Coast offense with him, tasking Johnson with serving to him assemble the playbook.
“Nicely, Benny not solely places the playbook collectively, he’s obtained that factor memorized, from routes to blocking schemes to you title it,” recalled Rogers, now a senior offensive assistant with the Browns.
Johnson made the bounce to the NFL in 2012, when the Dolphins introduced him on as an offensive assistant. He rose via the ranks to assistant quarterbacks coach, then coached the tight ends, then vast receivers. It was in Miami that Johnson met Lions Coach Dan Campbell, who was elevated from tight ends coach to interim coach in October 2015. Johnson additionally added to his checklist of teaching influences, studying from former coordinators Mike Sherman, Invoice Lazor and Clyde Christensen, in addition to former head coach Adam Gase and Zac Taylor, a former Dolphins assistant who’s now the Cincinnati Bengals’ coach.
“I’ve tried to rent Ben many, many, many instances,” Taylor stated in 2022. “He’s a type of guys you need in your employees as a result of he’s sensible.”
A ‘calculated’ offense
Johnson arrived to his new job in Detroit in 2019 in an Uber with reserve quarterback David Blough. Blough had been traded from Cleveland, and Johnson was tabbed as a top quality management coach every week into the season. The quarterback and the coach have been strangers, however they hit it off.
“Simply seeing how process-oriented and detail-driven … he’s, that leaks into our offense that you just see immediately,” stated Blough, who spent the 2023 season on Detroit’s observe squad. “What makes him actually particular is he’s not afraid to push the reducing fringe of creativity and take a look at new issues and have a very collaborative course of of individuals bringing him concepts. However he is aware of precisely who he’s.”
Johnson grew to become Detroit’s tight ends coach in 2020, then the passing recreation coordinator halfway via the 2021 season, when Campbell took over play-calling duties after the Lions began 0-8. He tasked Johnson with serving to to revamp the offense, which ranked twenty fourth within the NFL in passing yards and twenty seventh in offensive scoring. In its closing eight video games, the Lions ranked 14th and sixteenth, respectively.
Campbell made Johnson his coordinator the next season, and Johnson started to run an offense he has described as “calculated” with an emphasis on “pace and perspective,” which may “stress the protection in as some ways as potential.” He pulled from his personal influences: some West Coast ideas, a mixture of run-pass choices and a extra concise verbiage to assist management the tempo.
“We’re not making an attempt to get 100 performs in a recreation — that’s not our intent,” he stated in 2022. “… At instances we could go quick, and at different instances we could let off the pedal just a little bit and ensure we’re in the correct play.”
Johnson stated his recreation plans are by no means actually performed; he usually provides performs up till recreation day every week. He additionally listens to his gamers and often considers their suggestions, as Goff famous. He emphasizes approach and fundamentals and has adopted a precept Shoop taught him at UNC: Make the identical issues look totally different and various things look the identical.
“It’s about battle of project,” Shoop stated. “… To a protection, he makes the identical runs seem like play-action passes and play-action passes seem like the runs, and it simply paralyzes that mid-level of protection.”
Johnson loves explosive performs — “Each week we’re on a quest to seek out extra explosives,” he stated — and has famous that the Lions’ recreation plan at all times begins with the operating recreation. And after he spent years as a place coach, it’s maybe no shock he likes to characteristic do-it-all tight ends similar to Sam LaPorta — “The extra a number of they’re, the higher off and extra unpredictable we can be on offense,” Johnson stated final yr — and has an affinity for polished slot receivers similar to St. Brown.
Johnson has change into identified for his trick performs, creativity in vital moments, consideration to element and knack for capitalizing on his gamers’ strengths. He dialed up a move play to 6-foot-5, 335-pound proper sort out Penei Sewell on third and lengthy towards the Vikings in 2022. He referred to as a hook and lateral for operating again D’Andre Swift late towards the Packers in that season’s finale. Then he cooked up a pair of trick performs in a blowout win over the Carolina Panthers this season, giving LaPorta a wide-open path for a landing and having operating again David Montgomery take a direct snap via Goff’s legs for a first-down run.
“We’ve obtained a library of issues that catch our eye — whether or not within the NFL [or] school — that goes again for years now,” Johnson defined days after the Panthers recreation. “… Final week, we had a play up, it was fuzzy movie, and our guys have been us sideways.”
The Lions’ stash of artistic performs is a collaborative effort, Johnson has stated, with enter from many assistants — and a few much less doubtless individuals. As soon as, throughout a joint coaching camp observe, an official used a complete special-teams interval to attempt to promote Johnson on a play he concocted.
“I nonetheless have the diagram in my workplace,” Johnson stated.
In 2022, the Lions’ employees was tabbed to teach within the Senior Bowl, giving Johnson an opportunity to get a detailed take a look at the following technology of expertise. In between drills, he stood on the sideline with Sam Howell, a fellow North Carolina quarterback whom the Commanders would go on to draft within the fifth spherical that spring.
In a video the Lions shared, Howell requested Johnson why he had change into a coach. “One phrase,” Johnson instructed him. “Relationships.”
Relationships have been among the many causes Johnson pulled his title from consideration for head-coaching jobs final offseason, and Campbell believes the choice made him a greater coach and gave him a extra full view of what his subsequent gig would possibly entail.
“He’s beginning to search for and ask these questions on roster, game-day, constructing a group, what you’re searching for, entrance of the room,” Campbell stated. “And I feel it’s served him properly. It’s a credit score to him, man. Not many individuals would do this.”
The Commanders are one among two groups, together with the Seattle Seahawks, nonetheless searching for a brand new head coach, and they’re set to interview Johnson in Detroit on Tuesday, in accordance with an individual with data of the plans. Johnson is believed to be a high candidate for Washington, however Commanders proprietor Josh Harris and his search committee even have scheduled interviews with a number of different candidates this week.
The problem of teaching the Commanders, if Johnson finally ends up with the group, can be tough — however just like the final one he aced. Washington wants stability at quarterback. It must overhaul its offense and remake its protection. The group holds the No. 2 draft decide, 5 alternatives within the first three rounds and presumably probably the most wage cap area within the league.
And those that know Johnson have lengthy believed he has the make-up to take the lead on a serious job.
“Watching him develop over the previous couple of years and what he’s been capable of do to assist this place get restored,” Blough stated, “he could be a fantastic head coach.”
