You almost feel like anything you say about new Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson has to come with some sort of disclaimer or your thoughts will be pushed aside and you'll be accused of coping. So here's the disclaimer. 

Ben Johnson was the best offensive coordinator in the NFL in 2024 and 2023. There is no doubt about it and I won't take anything away from him. He was awesome at his job. 

But where things get really sticky is the idea that Johnson was the mastermind of the Lions' success and that Dan Campbell is just a rah rah guy who surrounds himself with genius. That's where something has to be said. That could not be farther from the truth and even Ben knows that.

"He's super intelligent and I've learned a ton from him." Johnson said to Pardonmytake at the NFL Combine. Johnson was discussing the Lions going for it on fourth-down a lot. 

The thing that a lot of football fans take away from that is that Campbell is just insane and his insanity happens to work more often than not. What Johnson explains is that Campbell had all of it down to a fine science. 

"Each week was its own entity, though, and so it wasn't like you went into the season saying, 'hey, every fourth-and-2, we're always going to go for it.' That was not the case. It just depended on the week, the opponent, how aggressive they were, the weather. There's all kinds of factors that come into play. And so going into the game, yeah, he would have shared that information with me, of man, once we hit midfield, if you can make it fourth-and-3 or less, then, then you're going to have a green light. And then over the course of the game, once we hit that range, he would be in my headset and telling me, 'Hey, you got four downs here,' which would tell me why you just got to make this fourth-and-3 or less, right? And so what that allowed me to do as a play caller was we ran the ball a shit ton on third down where you know to make it into those manageable situations, and a lot of those runs we ended up converting anyways because that's that's actually the best time to run the ball, so it was I think that was his whole grand scheme. You know there's a lot of science behind it." 

That's just one example there where while Johnson was calling the plays, it's Campbell who was setting up the framework in which the plays are called. 

People often forget that Campbell is an offensive guy who comes from years under Sean Payton and Bill Parcells. He's ran in high powered offenses and he's helped call high powered offenses. In  Detroit, he's taken what he's learned and designed the offense that the Lions run.

Johnson is a mad genius when it comes to drawing up trick plays and plays that work, but this is a situational football team and Dan Campbell is the situational mad genius that's put together the whole scheme. 

It's not just the fourth down stuff, Johnson has gone to Chicago and he's talking like Campbell and building his coaching staff like Campbell. He's saying things like "sleeping giant" and hiring former players to be the coach of the team. Make no mistake that there is nothing wrong with that, but the idea that Campbell just fell off the back of a truck somewhere and got lucky with Johnson is not accurate. 

So if you're worried about the Lions offense taking a step back because Johnson is gone, the factors for it to continue to be really good are still very much there. Dan Campbell and the players are still in Detroit. 

We also know that situational football is still something the Lions are going to work with. New offensive coordinator John Morton talked about how important that was at the combine. He also talked about how while he's calling the plays, this is Campbell's offense and that the team will still be looking to run trick plays and be super aggressive.

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