Coordinator recap: Johnson still has burning desire to be a head coach, Glenn finds 'sky is falling' narrative dumb

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Allen Park — Here are the most interesting things to come out of Thursday's media sessions with the Detroit Lions three coordinators.

Burning desire lingers

Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson surprised many people, including those in the building, when he withdrew his name from head coaching opportunities last offseason to return to Detroit. It led some to question whether he desired a top job or was content staying in an offensive coordinator role.

There’s been no urgency to address his future during this season, at least not at this stage, but with the Chicago Bears on deck, and one of their local reporters in town for the day, the topic finally came up. And despite Johnson's history of dismissing those questions in the past, he was fairly direct when asked about whether he still wanted to be a head coach someday.

“Yeah, I'd say this, I think there's a burning desire in every man to find what he's made out of and push the limits and see if he's got what it takes,” he said. “Yeah, there's a fire there. When that time is, I don't know when that would be, but there's certainly a fire there.”

Johnson has been a hot candidate each of the past two years. In 2022, he arguably wasn’t ready for the opportunity. Reasonably, how could he have been? He went from tight ends coach to passing game coordinator to offensive coordinator in a matter of months, before turning the Lions into a top-five unit his first season running the show. There’s no way he could have anticipated his rapid rise after toiling in the background as a lower-level NFL assistant for the better part of a decade.

After leading the Lions offense to another stellar season in 2023, it seemed logical for him to take the next step. Many assumed he was as good as gone. But the timing still wasn’t right. Johnson was happy with his current situation, with aspirations of achieving something greater in Detroit.

"This is as encouraged as I've been in my four years, with the direction of the Lions and where we're headed,” Johnson said last February. "You know what, there are so many things going on here, so many good people, coaches, players. I love the offensive staff, everyone we have on board there. I love the players. I love coming into work every day. Coach (Dan) Campbell is incredible. So, end of the day, talking with my family, it just made sense. It made sense, don't ruin a good thing."

On Thursday, asked what he learned from his experience interviewing for several openings the past two years, Johnson was again more expansive than he’s been in the past, especially during the season.

“Yeah, I'd say I'm much more prepared than I was the last two years,” Johnson said. “The local media has been very gracious on me this year by not bringing it up. So, no, the last couple of years, getting thrown into the coordinator role, things get on you fast and you don't really have time to think about the future a whole lot. Now that I've been through the wringer a couple times, had some interviews, I certainly do feel more prepared, just from a big-picture standpoint.

“But right now, we've got three games left in the regular season, going into the postseason, and, honestly, this is why I wanted to be here,” Johnson said. “I have an obligation to the people in the building to be right where my feet are. When I walk in and see the coaches staying long nights and working as hard as they're doing, and I come in and see the guys, the players in the meeting room and on the practice field attacking each day like they are, it's hard for my mind to wander much beyond what we're doing in the here and now.”

Propping up the sky

My colleagues have loved their “sky is falling” questions this week. And given some of the quotes they’ve generated in response, it’s easy to understand why.

Defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn joined the mix of fiery, quotable responses on Thursday.

“We’re 12-2,” Glenn said. “We’re 12-2 and the sky is falling? We’re going to the playoffs, we’re in the tournament. Why in the hell is the sky falling for us? Why do we have to sit back and be sad? We leave that up to you guys. We let you guys do that.

“Our job is to go play football and that’s what we’re going to continue to do,” Glenn said. “We lost one game — well two games. We lost two games. We have a chance to win out and accomplish everything that we want to accomplish. So why should we sit back and wallow and think that the sky is falling? It’s dumb.”

It’s not the loss to Buffalo that’s got the collective outside world wringing its hands as much as the injury list. The team is up to 21 players on injured reserve after losing Alim McNeill, Carlton Davis III and Khalil Dorsey on Sunday. That could climb to 22 pending the result of running back David Montgomery's third medical opinion on his injured knee.

“Listen, we’ve said this from the beginning, the next guy’s got to come up and play,” Glenn said. “That’s the reason why they’re here. And I’ve said this also, I’m not going to disrespect any of the players that we have here because they work their asses off just like everybody else, and I hope that you guys don’t do that also because they deserve a chance to go out there and play whenever their time is to go play. Our personnel department does a really good job of finding guys that fit who we are and we’re going to put them on the field and we’re going to play.

“I believe that we can be a damn good defense because even though we lost those guys,” Glenn said. “We’ve still improved and still did some good things. So that’s how I look at it.”

Execution OK on critical kicks

Special teams coordinator Dave Fipp predictably fielded several questions about the team’s onside kick strategy after attempting two in the fourth quarter against Buffalo.

Fipp was pleased with the execution by kicker Jake Bates on both efforts, even though the Lions failed to recover either.

“I obviously hated the result, and at the end of the day, what we’re trying to get done is we’re trying to get the ball back,” Fipp said. “We came up short on it, but in terms of the kick, I did think that we gave ourselves a chance.

“There’re a number of things to that,” Fipp said. “Number one is being onside. If you’re offside, you’re, in essence, just handing the ball to the other team in that situation. So you can’t be that. But you’ve also got to play on the edge. If you don’t, you’re not going to get (the ball). And so, I thought both balls gave us a chance, I mean, all you can really hope for is to get one-on-one with the guy catching the ball right around the time he’s catching it, and if you get that, you’ve done a pretty good job with the kick.”

Fipp said they came into the game planning to use the wide, high bouncer they tried on the first try, but switched to the shot up the middle on the second onside kick based on how the Bills lined up. Still, that’s not an easy decision because you put your kicker in the line of fire with the recovery attempt.

“Yeah, you get nervous about some of those kicks down the middle of the field with the kicker being out there first,” Fipp said. “I felt much better about it because there’s only one guy, and then that guy is going to try to field the ball, or if he’s not going to field the ball, then hopefully we get the ball. He’s probably going to field the ball, so he’s not really in a position to hit us.

“Then, I think you see there was another guy coming in from the left and (Sione) Vaki knocked that guy off, so I felt pretty good about us not getting a lot of contact on him on that kick,” Fipp said. “Had they been loaded up with more guys in there, I would’ve been much more nervous about it.”

Allen in the rearview, for now

Asked how much time he’s already spent thinking about how he’d defend Bills quarterback Josh Allen differently if they matched up again in the Super Bowl, Glenn dismissed the idea entering his mind.

“No, I go onto the next game,” Glenn said. “Right now, we’re about to get ready to play the Bears, another good team who have skilled players that we have to be good with. They have a quarterback that’s emerging right now and, obviously, like I said about the skill players, we know who those guys are. We have to do a good job against those guys.”

Glenn raved about Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams a little later in his session and was critical of how the media has portrayed Williams, comparing it to harsh feedback former Jets and current Vikings QB Sam Darnold faced early in his career.

“He’s very resilient,” Glenn said. “There’s no quit in that player. It’s funny that the narrative that so many people want to put on someone when they really don’t know who they are. That it’s funny to me and that happens to a lot of these young quarterbacks that’s in this league. They get beat down so much that people really don’t see the things that they go through to be a top player, especially a No. 1 pick. You can go through the years of some of these guys — think of the quarterback that Minnesota has right now. He was beaten down so much with the Jets and now he’s having success. And now these so-called guys that think they know what they’re talking about have no idea.

“When I see the same thing with this player (Williams), I’m not saying that his career’s going to end up the same way, but I think that he’s a damn good player,” Glenn said. “He has a lot of talent. He has talent around him. He’s going to have to continue to learn and grow to understand that. …We have to make sure that we corral him, we have to make sure — our (coverage) disguises have to be on point with this player because if he sees it, he's going to get the ball out and he’s going to find out where he needs to go.”

Top unit hasn’t met expectations

Detroit’s offensive line, viewed by many observers as the league’s best coming into the season, has struggled to be consistently dominant. Johnson acknowledged as much when asked to evaluate the unit’s performance.

“It’s up and down,” the offensive coordinator said. “It hasn’t been consistent throughout the year. We’ve had glimpses of being a dominant unit and then there are other times, like last week, that we just weren’t ourselves. I will say, in regards to last game, the protection, for throwing it 59 times, was pretty good. I know Jared (Goff) had some pressure and he got hit a little bit, but when you drop back and you don’t move the pocket as much as we did in that game, we felt like our guys really answered the bell in that regard.

“It’s not necessarily always rushing statistics, it’s not always sacks, it’s looking at everybody individually and we’ve had some pretty consistent performances across the board,” Johnson continued. “It's just collectively, it hasn’t come together for an entire 60 minutes in a while.”

On Wednesday, the Lions held four of their five starters out of practice, including three for rest days.

“Yeah, we had an early bye week, and then certainly after the Green Bay game, we were able to get our legs back under us a little bit,” Johnson said. “But it’s a long season, and fortunately up front there, we’ve been fairly healthy. So they’ve logged a lot of snaps. They’ve logged a lot of games and we have a number of guys over 30 years old. So I think coach (Campbell) is being smart with it and just making sure that we’re staying fresh here for the next three in the regular season going into the postseason as well.”