Johnson gave Goff a voice. He was “really curious about what I thought and what I liked,” Goff said that spring, and that collaborative approach helped turn the Lions from a 3-13-1 team in 2021 into a 12-5 division champion this season. Detroit’s offense finished among the NFL’s top five in yards and scoring in both of Johnson’s seasons as coordinator, and the 2023 team ended a 32-year playoff victory drought.
“He’s one of the main reasons why I’ve had the success that I’ve been able to have,” wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown said of Johnson. “… He’s a brilliant mind and one of the hardest-working coaches I’ve ever been around. And as players, we trust him. We know that whatever he says, we feel like it’s going to work.”
As Johnson built up his quarterback and his team, he also built his own reputation as a savvy play caller and respected teacher. Once a little-known position coach who jumped from the college ranks to the NFL, he is now a coveted head coach candidate. In an era when NFL teams are chasing prodigies such as the Los Angeles Rams’ Sean McVay and the Miami Dolphins’ Mike McDaniel, Johnson, 37, might be the next young, analytically driven play caller to make the leap.
Cam Sexton is still surprised Johnson turned to coaching after their years together as quarterbacks at the University of North Carolina. “If you asked me back then, what would Ben Johnson be doing today, I would [have said] he would most likely be working on the Artemis program at NASA,” Sexton said.
Johnson graduated near the top of his class at A.C. Reynolds High in Asheville, N.C., and helped the football team to a state championship as a quarterback. But he didn’t get college looks or scholarship offers. So he walked on at North Carolina in 2004 and spent three years as the Tar Heels’ third-string quarterback while studying mathematics and computer science. He enjoyed writing computer games — he once built a hockey game, Sexton recalled — and solving complex math equations.
“Ben really is uncommonly bright,” said John Shoop, his offensive coordinator and position coach at UNC in 2007. “But … he also has common sense and interpersonal skills to go with it.”
On the field, Johnson earned only special teams snaps, but he immersed himself in UNC’s offensive scheme — along with every other team’s. Chris Allen, the Tar Heels’ video coordinator, recalled Johnson “always” being in the video room, often sitting alone and watching game tape, cut-ups of specific scenarios, scouting reports and even film that required Allen to dig through the archives. “Couldn’t get rid of him,” Allen recalled.
Johnson was typically UNC’s scout team quarterback, but Chase Rice, Johnson’s teammate in high school and a linebacker at North Carolina, said that’s not how he looked at his role. “He was looking at it like he’s going to make us better,” Rice said. “I remember him running the scout team, and he knew more about the other team’s offense than we did.”
John Bunting, the Tar Heels’ coach from 2000 to 2006, said Johnson was more like a graduate assistant than a backup. He wore a headset on game days and signaled in plays from the sideline. But a less technical aspect of the game lured Johnson into coaching; he has credited Shoop as his inspiration for how to treat other staff and players. It was about the relationships.
“He’s one of those guys that probably could have gone on to get his PhD or something,” Shoop said. “I’m not sure he even knew if he had the [coaching] bug or not. Clearly when we were together, something started percolating.”
Johnson’s first job was as a graduate assistant at Boston College in 2009. To streamline the play-calling and help the quarterbacks organize their thoughts on the field, Johnson color-coded the offensive coordinator’s play sheet and the quarterbacks’ wristbands. Blue indicated one personnel grouping; red signified another.
Two years later, Boston College brought in a new coordinator, Kevin Rogers. He had spent half a decade in the NFL, coaching Brett Favre in Minnesota, and he brought the Vikings’ West Coast offense with him, tasking Johnson with helping him assemble the playbook.
“Well, Benny not only puts the playbook together, he’s got that thing memorized, from routes to blocking schemes to you name it,” recalled Rogers, now a senior offensive assistant with the Browns.
Johnson made the jump to the NFL in 2012, when the Dolphins brought him on as an offensive assistant. He rose through the ranks to assistant quarterbacks coach, then coached the tight ends, then wide 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 also added to his list of coaching influences, learning from former coordinators Mike Sherman, Bill Lazor and Clyde Christensen, as well as former head coach Adam Gase and Zac Taylor, a former Dolphins assistant who’s now the Cincinnati Bengals’ coach.
“I’ve tried to hire Ben many, many, many times,” Taylor said in 2022. “He’s one of those guys you want on your staff because he’s brilliant.”
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 quality control coach a week into the season. The quarterback and the coach were strangers, but they hit it off.
“Just seeing how process-oriented and detail-driven … he is, that leaks into our offense that you see today,” said Blough, who spent the 2023 season on Detroit’s practice squad. “What makes him really special is he’s not afraid to push the cutting edge of creativity and try new things and have a truly collaborative process of people bringing him ideas. But he knows exactly who he is.”
Johnson became Detroit’s tight ends coach in 2020, then the passing game coordinator midway through the 2021 season, when Campbell took over play-calling duties after the Lions started 0-8. He tasked Johnson with helping to revamp the offense, which ranked 24th in the NFL in passing yards and 27th in offensive scoring. In its final eight games, the Lions ranked 14th and 16th, respectively.
Campbell made Johnson his coordinator the following season, and Johnson began to run an offense he has described as “calculated” with an emphasis on “speed and attitude,” which can “stress the defense in as many ways as possible.” He pulled from his own influences: some West Coast principles, a mix of run-pass options and a more concise verbiage to help control the tempo.
“We’re not trying to get 100 plays in a game — that’s not our intent,” he said in 2022. “… At times we may go fast, and at other times we may let off the pedal a little bit and make sure we’re in the right play.”
Johnson said his game plans are never truly done; he often adds plays up until game day each week. He also listens to his players and regularly considers their feedback, as Goff noted. He emphasizes technique and fundamentals and has followed a principle Shoop taught him at UNC: Make the same things look different and different things look the same.
“It’s about conflict of assignment,” Shoop said. “… To a defense, he makes the same runs look like play-action passes and play-action passes look like the runs, and it just paralyzes that mid-level of defense.”
Johnson loves explosive plays — “Every week we’re on a quest to find more explosives,” he said — and has noted that the Lions’ game plan always starts with the running game. And after he spent years as a position coach, it’s perhaps no surprise he loves to feature do-it-all tight ends such as Sam LaPorta — “The more multiple they are, the better off and more unpredictable we will be on offense,” Johnson said last year — and has an affinity for polished slot receivers such as St. Brown.
Johnson has become known for his trick plays, creativity in critical moments, attention to detail and knack for capitalizing on his players’ strengths. He dialed up a pass play to 6-foot-5, 335-pound right tackle Penei Sewell on third and long against the Vikings in 2022. He called a hook and lateral for running back D’Andre Swift late against the Packers in that season’s finale. Then he cooked up a pair of trick plays in a blowout win over the Carolina Panthers this season, giving LaPorta a wide-open path for a touchdown and having running back David Montgomery take a direct snap through Goff’s legs for a first-down run.
“We’ve got a library of things that catch our eye — whether in the NFL [or] college — that goes back for years now,” Johnson explained days after the Panthers game. “… Last week, we had a play up, it was fuzzy film, and our guys were looking at us sideways.”
The Lions’ stash of creative plays is a collaborative effort, Johnson has said, with input from many assistants — and some less likely participants. Once, during a joint training camp practice, an official used an entire special-teams period to try to sell Johnson on a play he concocted.
“I still have the diagram in my office,” Johnson said.
In 2022, the Lions’ staff was tabbed to coach in the Senior Bowl, giving Johnson a chance to get a close look at the next generation of talent. In between drills, he stood on the sideline with Sam Howell, a fellow North Carolina quarterback whom the Commanders would go on to draft in the fifth round that spring.
In a video the Lions shared, Howell asked Johnson why he had become a coach. “One word,” Johnson told him. “Relationships.”
Relationships were among the reasons Johnson pulled his name from consideration for head-coaching jobs last offseason, and Campbell believes the decision made him a better coach and gave him a more complete view of what his next gig might entail.
“He’s starting to look for and ask these questions about roster, game-day, building a team, what you’re looking for, front of the room,” Campbell said. “And I think it’s served him well. It’s a credit to him, man. Not many people would do that.”
The Commanders are one of two teams, along with the Seattle Seahawks, still looking for a new head coach, and they are set to interview Johnson in Detroit on Tuesday, according to a person with knowledge of the plans. Johnson is believed to be a top candidate for Washington, but Commanders owner Josh Harris and his search committee also have scheduled interviews with several other candidates this week.
The challenge of coaching the Commanders, if Johnson ends up with the team, will be difficult — but similar to the last one he aced. Washington needs stability at quarterback. It needs to overhaul its offense and remake its defense. The team holds the No. 2 draft pick, five selections in the first three rounds and possibly the most salary cap space in the league.
And those who know Johnson have long believed he has the makeup to take the lead on a major job.
“Watching him grow over the last few years and what he’s been able to do to help this place get restored,” Blough said, “he would be a great head coach.”
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