Head Coach Candidate Profile: Ben Johnson

Taking a closer look at Lions OC Ben Johnson and the scheme he runs in Detroit

With the 2023 regular season officially over and the Washington Commanders failing to make the playoffs, it’s time for new owner Josh Harris to start making significant changes to the football operations in Washington. Ron Rivera has been officially fired so I thought we could look ahead to some of the head coaching candidates that could be in line to replace Rivera. 

Now before I get into the main part of this article, I want to stress two things. First, Harris is likely to appoint a general manager and/or a president of football operations as his first move, and then will likely allow that person to hire a new head coach. So pay attention to the names being linked with a general manager role in Washington and what links they may have to coaches. Guys like Ian Cunningham and Joe Hortiz, for example, both have strong links to the Ravens organization and thus might lean more towards hiring current Ravens defensive coordinator Mike MacDonald. 

The second thing I want to point out is that being a head coach is far more than just having a good system and knowing Xs and Os. We’ve seen plenty of examples of the best strategists fail as head coaches and we’ve seen some great head coaches that aren’t even calling plays. Scheme is important but it’s not everything and head coaches have to deal with so much more than just what play to call on third down. But as I don’t have the ability to sit down with any of these coaches and try and figure out their character and plans to lead a team, I can only evaluate what kind of system they’d look to bring to Washington. 

So with all that being said, let’s take a look at the first head coaching candidate that is probably top of just about everyone’s list around the NFL this offseason: Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. Johnson was one of the hot candidates this time last year and actually turned down multiple opportunities to stay in Detroit. It’s expected he’ll likely end up leaving Detroit this year and if he does, Washington would be silly not to be interested. It takes just a few games of watching Johnson’s offense and game plans to see why he’s so highly rated. 

Layered packages of plays

The number one thing that stood out to me when studying Johnson’s offense with the Lions was how well he puts together packages of plays with multiple layers. When you think of the best offenses in the league over the last 5-10 years, you think of Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay, who are outstanding at creating packages of plays that all look the same and build off each other. If you think of that Shanahan offense, immediately you think of the wide zone runs which then builds into play-action bootlegs, which then builds into screen passes after a fake bootleg and then into a pure drop back play-action pass. Each individual play will have two or three more plays built off of it that use the same personnel, formation and motion to make the defense think the first play is coming, only to surprise them with the next. 

Johnson also does this really well with his Lions offense. A great example of that came against the Seahawks earlier this season. 

This clips has a couple of plays to explain, but they’re part of the same package. The first play of the clip came midway through the second quarter of the game. The Lions align in a two-by-two formation with the tight end to the right, the Z receiver outside the numbers and the two receivers to the left in a stacked set. Before the snap, quarterback Jared Goff signals for the Z receiver to go in motion and the receiver uses a short motion to come tighter to the formation. 

With this motion, the Seahawks are anticipating a run play, with that Z receiver coming inside to try and block the strong safety that is down in the box to help defend the run. The Lions play into that by actually handing the ball off to the running back to help sell the fake even further. With the linebackers and the strong safety biting up to defend the run, the Z receiver fakes attempting to block the strong safety before taking off up the seam. The running back then flicks the ball back to the quarterback, who finds his receiver wide open down the field for a 36-yard touchdown pass. 

Later in the game, Johnson and the Lions come back to the exact same look. On the second play of the clip, we see the same two-by-two formation and the same short motion by the Z receiver. Having already seen this look previously, the Seahawks keep the strong safety back deep to try and help protect any potential deep shot coming. However, that’s exactly what the Lions wanted as it then took the safety out of the box, giving them a better look to run into. This time, Johnson calls for a counter run scheme, with the left guard pulling to the edge to kick out the edge defender with the running back taking the hand off and following behind him. 

The run is blocked nicely and the Lions pick up five yards on the carry, but it could have been significantly more had the right guard been able to secure the defensive tackle inside. If he had done so, the running back would have been into the open field untouched and working against the strong safety in space, instead of the strong safety being down in the box filling the gap he’s working through. 

These are the types of packages Johnson likes to put together. Like Shanahan, he can build out a series of plays from one look, including a run, play-action, screen and pass. He also likes to build out a package of passing concepts that look the same to the defense initially but have some slight tweaks to keep them off balance. 

On this package of plays, I want you to focus on the scheme rather than the results. Johnson can only scheme things up so well, it’s up to his plays to execute those schemes and make use of his talent. The first play of this clip is one of the most common passing concepts in the NFL, disguised with a bunch of window dressing. 

The Lions align three receivers in a bunch to the left with the running back outside of them. The back then goes in motion into the backfield and stays in to block. In the bunch set, the outside receiver runs a deep corner route designed mainly to clear out coverage and get out of the way of the other two receivers. Inside, rookie tight end Sam LaPorta runs a shallow cross from the point of the bunch, which is meant to grab the attention of any underneath zone defenders and drag them inside, vacating space behind him. Then receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown runs what is often referred to as a quick seam or short post route. 

This play has been around the league for years and isn’t anything new. Kyle Shanahan calls it Arches, after the Gateway Arch in St. Louis as a tribute to the St. Louis Rams, who made this play famous. Sean McVay called it Quick Seam when he was the offensive coordinator under Jay Gruden in Washington. The old Air Coryell system called it F Post. So Johnson hasn’t created anything new here, but he dressed it up with a bunch set and the running back motion to help disguise it. All that window dressing caused the defense to not catch on to what was happening and St. Brown broke wide open over the middle on his route. Unfortunately, Jared Goff’s pass was tipped at the line of scrimmage, but you can see the space St. Brown would have had to work with had the ball made it to him. 

Now as I said, that play itself is nothing new, but what Johnson did well here is recognize that the play worked despite the negative result of the pass being tipped, and he went back to it a little later on. On the second play of the clip, we see the exact same formation and motion as we saw in the first play of the clip, just flipped to the other side of the field. However, Johnson anticipates the defense adjusting to the play they saw previously, so he tweaks it slightly. Instead of having St. Brown break inside on the quick seam, Johnson has him fake the route and then take off down the sideline. In order to do that, he has to take the outside receiver out of the way, so his route is adjusted from a corner route to a whip route, where he breaks outside quickly and then whips the route back inside underneath as a checkdown option. 

The result of this play is an overall positive, with Goff finding LaPorta on his shallow crosser for a nice gain, but it had the potential to be so much more. St. Brown sold his fake well and the defender in coverage played with heavy inside leverage expecting the route to break inside. That meant when St. Brown took off down the sideline, he gained a step on the defender and was open. So too was the outside receiver breaking back inside on his whip route and effectively replacing St. Brown working inside. 

It’s very clever design with small tweaks to the route combinations that not only make plays successful in the first place, but also set up counter punches off the same looks later on in the game for potentially more explosive plays. That’s a common thread I found through all of the games I studied on Johnson’s offense. In each game he had a number of packages like these that played well off of each other and gave his plays a huge advantage with the defense believing they’re getting one thing, only to be surprised with another. 

Individualized packages

Another thing that stood out to me with Johnson was how he designed packages of plays specific to the skill sets of his individual players. One example of this would be with receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown. St. Brown is a very shifty receiver with great route running ability as he can make sharp and swift cuts in and out of his breaks. This makes him a huge threat outside but also in the slot or in condensed formations where he has space to work outside or over the middle. Johnson has doe a terrific job making use of that talent, designing packages of plays specifically for St. Brown. 

Here we see some more examples of layered concepts, as we saw earlier, but this time specifically with St. Brown in mind. On the first play of this clip, the Lions align St. Brown outside the numbers to the right of the formation, but have him motion into a stacked set with a tight end before the snap. From that condensed position, St. Brown has room to work both inside and outside. On this occasion, they have him run what’s known as a C.O, meaning a choice out. 

The route uses the stem of a choice route, where St. Brown widens at the snap to get into the seam and give himself room to break inside or outside as he would on a choice route, but then it has a mandatory break outside. The underneath coverage defender plays with heavy inside leverage to protect against the threat of a choice route working inside while the outside corner sinks deep to match the threat of the tight end working vertically. This allows St. Brown to break outside freely and be wide open for an easy seven-yard gain. 

On the second play of the clip, we again see the same look and motion from the Lions with St. Brown starting outside the numbers and then motioning short into a stacked set. Having already seen this look before, the Ravens’ defenders think they know what’s coming. Cornerback Marlon Humphrey follows St. Brown inside and lines up in press coverage. St. Brown again uses his choice route stem to set up the potential choice route but then breaks outside to the sideline. Humphrey loses ground as St. Brown breaks outside but desperately scrambles to make up ground and get back on top of the route. He does so successfully, only for St. Brown to suddenly break off the route and work back inside.

Quarterback Jared Goff places the ball just slightly behind St. Brown, but the pass is still catchable. Unfortunately St. Brown drops the pass, which is bad enough but when you notice the space in the middle of the field that he would have had to run into after the catch, the drop looks even worse. Like I said earlier, we can’t blame Johnson for the drop and thus the result, but the scheme was excellent and made use of the talents of one of his top receivers. In Washington, Jahan Dotson is someone with a similar skillset to St. Brown in terms of his route running and shiftiness, so perhaps Dotson would be a natural fit if Johnson ends up being hired by the Commanders.

Now I said Johnson does these individual packages for multiple players, so let’s also take a look at a common way he used rookie running back Jahmyr Gibbs as a pass catcher out of the backfield. The Lions drafted Gibbs with the 12th overall pick back in April, a surprise to many with the decreased value placed on running backs across the NFL, but Johnson made sure to make use of Gibbs’ talents. 

This is one of the most frequent ways the Lions looked to get Gibbs the ball as a pass catcher out of the backfield. The Lions run a simple HB (half back) choice concept with Gibbs aligning to the left of Goff in the shotgun and using that same stem that we saw earlier from St. Brown. But this time, instead of having to break outside as St. Brown did on his C.O route, Gibbs has a true option route. He can break outside, but he can also break inside or sit down at the top of his route depending on how the coverage plays him. 

On this occasion, the Seahawks look to play man coverage and the linebacker in coverage on Gibbs believes he’s running some form of wheel route outside, so begins to turn and run down the sideline. This gives Gibbs an easy read on the coverage and he breaks sharply inside towards the middle of the field and away from the defender. Goff finds him open over the middle and the Lions pick up an easy first down. 

Now, while it’s important to have these individualized packages of plays for specific players, what Johnson does best is finding ways to combine these types of concepts which both allow individual players to do what they do best, but also create a cohesive concept for the quarterback to read out properly. 

On this play, we see the Lions use a concept known in the Shanahan tree as Choice Stucko. In the backfield, Gibbs again aligns to the left of Goff in the shotgun and runs that same option route that we just saw. However, to the right of the formation, the Lions also have St. Brown in the slot running what Shanahan calls a “stick china” route, which is essentially a stick route where the receiver breaks outside after a few steps, but then pivots back inside towards the middle of the field. 

The core of the idea here is that the Lions want to stress the middle of the field for the defense, specifically the Mike (middle) linebacker. If that linebacker works to the right of the formation and attaches to the stick route from St. Brown, Gibbs should have a one-on-one with the chance to break inside for a nice gain. If the Mike ends up working to Gibbs to try and stop him from breaking over the middle, that will leave St. Brown free to whip his route back inside and into the vacated space over the middle. 

As the play progresses, we can see the Mike linebacker attaching to Gibbs and the choice route. Gibbs reads the coverage correctly and sees that he’s bracketed both outside and inside, meaning he has to sit his route down. This isn’t an ideal situation on a choice route, however because of the design of this play, it works out nicely. With the Mike vacating the middle of the field. St. Brown is able to pivot back inside into a wide open space. Goff finds St. Brown in the hole over the middle and St. Brown picks up about 15 yards before being brought down. 

It's an impressive play design by Johnson. Both Gibbs and St. Brown thrive on these types of routes, so Johnson found a way to let them both work to their strengths without having them clash in each other’s space, all while providing significant stress to the defense. It’s that combination of designing packages of plays for individual players, but being able to integrate them with packages of plays designed for other players at the same time that makes Johnson such an appealing candidate. 

As I mentioned at the start of this post, there’s a lot more to being a head coach than just the system you’re installing. But Johnson does have a great system and has shown great flexibility to adjust his offense to his specific personnel and find ways to build individualized packages for his best players and intertwine those packages together to really stress opposing defenses. If Johnson were to end up as the next head coach of the Commanders, provided he can prove his leadership capabilities and his ability to connect with his players, then his scheme would be one I’d be hugely excited to see in Washington over the next few years.