Way back in January of 2021, the Detroit Lions introduced Dan Campbell as their new head coach. He got up and did a presser for over an hour, and it was incredibly impressive to everyone in local media there to cover it and Lions fans who watched every minute of it. 

At the very end of the presser he made a little comment about biting kneecaps and that has since been the most annoying thing that has ever happened and it has also been locked into the minds of national media, execsutives and fans of other teams that this was the only thing that happend in that presser and that Campbell is a meathead. 

In 2022, he promoted tight ends coach Ben Johnson to take over as offensive coordinator. From there, Campbell, Johnson, Jared Goff, new Lions offensive coordinator John Morton, Mark Brunell, and a small handful of others installed the offense we've seen this team be so successful with ever since. From the first point of success, the credit has gone to one man and one man only. That's Johnson. 

That's despite Johnson telling everyone how Campbell was the mastermind, how Johnson sees himself as an extension of Goff, and how important Morton was to the installation. The man is a scientist to everyone, and there is no other way that anyone else wants to see it. That's how you get anonymous executives saying Things like this:

"Ben Johnson took total advantage of the four-down game-management approach because he's a really, really good playcaller, an evil genius really. Losing him would almost be like the Rams losing Sean McVay." 

That was in Mike Sando's latest column for The Athletic, where he asked executives about every team. 

There are just a lot of problems with this comment from the exec. For starters, Johnson gives Campbell credit for the four down system and would refer to Campbell on how and when to utilize it. This implies that Campbell just said, "Hey, go do what you want, I'm gonna go have a Capri-Sun and a nap." 

It's just another example of how people think  Campbell is just some guy who lucked into finding Johnson, while Johnson is like, 'seriously, guys, I learned how to be a coordinator from Dan" and everyone's all, "stop being modest, Ben, do another hook and ladder Brainiac and then we'll take over Metropolis." 

Look, we're not saying that Ben Johnson is not a good play caller. He is innovative to the core, and he's absolutely and mad scientist. But Campbell is also a scientist and a pretty good one. 

That's where the whole McVay thing just feels silly. It implies that the Lions just dropped the ball and lost the only thing that's made them successful when, in fact, Campbell has been the McVay this entire time and Johnson has been the O'Connell. 

Like O'Connell, everything that Johnson did in Detroit was under the construct and the design of someone else. That didn't mean he didn't have his own good ideas and couldn't impart them onto another team, but it does mean that he worked within someone else's system first. Nobody ever claimed that the Rams were only good because O'Connell or Lafleur or anyone else who was under McVay. 

At the end of the day, it's because all you hear on the outside is that McVay is a genius and Campbell is a meathead "rah rah guy."

There Detroit Lions are in very good hands with Campbell. They may have lost an important part of the car, but they still have the engine here. This thing is still going to run pretty much the same.  

The Lions find their next Ezekiel Ansah in the 2025 NFL Draft with selection of Ahmed Hassanein

Back in 2013, the Detroit Lions had the fifth pick in the NFL Draft, and they took a chance on a young Ghana-born edge rusher who had spent most of his life playing basketball and played football for just a couple of years before the draft. That was Ezekiel Ansah.  Ansah worked out really well. […]