It’s not often that an assistant coach from the Detroit Lions ever gets a shot to climb the coaching ladder as a head coach elsewhere. Rarer still is that coach choosing to remain with the Lions instead of chasing greater fame and fortune elsewhere.
Yet that’s where we are with the initial report from NFL.com’s Tom Pelissero, now confirmed by multiple sources in both Detroit and Charlotte, that Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson has chosen to stay with the Lions for the 2023 season. Johnson was scheduled to interview for the Panthers’ head coach opening on Wednesday and was widely considered the favorite for the job by both Panthers insiders and the sportsbooks.
Now he’s not even making the flight to interview with Carolina. Johnson had already interviewed via teleconference with the Panthers, as well as the Indianapolis Colts and Houston Texans for their head coaching vacancies. He won’t continue the courtship process with either of those teams as well.
Ben Johnson is staying in Detroit because Ben Johnson wants to stay as the coordinator of one of the NFL’s most prolific, most talented and most fun offenses. He saw more money, more power elsewhere and consciously decided that staying with this Lions organization was the best opportunity.
Some of that decision is based in the reality that Johnson is only 36 and is coming off his rookie season as a coordinator. He will absolutely have more chances down the line, especially if his diversely talented offense produces in 2023 the way it did in 2022. Detroit scored 26.6 points per game, good for sixth in the league. The Lions scored at least 20 points in 10 of the last 11 games, winning eight of those.
Johnson’s aggressively creative scheming, forged in hand with both QB Jared Goff’s skills and head coach Dan Campbell’s considerable input, made him one of the brightest stars rising in the NFL coaching sky. Goff played the best football of his seven-year career over those final 11 games. Campbell stayed faithful to them when both Johnson and Goff had an uneven start to the season. He encouraged the “mad scientist” attack, believing in crazy ideas like throwing a critical conversion pass to right tackle Penei Sewell, or a hook-and-lateral screen pass to help ice the Week 18 win in Green Bay against a stunned Packers team.
Those are the types of decisions that can work with the talent and the cohesion in Detroit. Trying that without having multiple viable threats on every play, a very good offensive line and a lot more personal stake in a potential negative outcome is something that Johnson decided wasn’t for him. Not yet.
That day will come for Johnson. Thankfully, it’s at least a year away. That gives Campbell and the Lions a great chance to build upon the 8-2 finish to the season, but also to help better groom an internal successor for Johnson when he gets the offer he cannot — and should not — refuse.
The window to win with Goff, Amon-Ra St. Brown, a healthy young OL and a cadre of rushing and receiving options, was just opening toward the end of 2022. We barely caught a glimpse of what the lethal speed of rookie WR Jameson Williams can do in this offense.
Johnson’s return throws away the storm shutters and opens that window wider in 2023 than it’s been in a very long time in Detroit. That means something to Johnson and it should mean something to Detroit fans, too.
