Many NFL analysts and insiders strongly believed Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson would be a head coach on another team right now. Johnson has certainly had opportunities, with Carolina and Washington this past offseason and also with the Panthers and Texans, and perhaps the Colts, a year earlier.
Yet Johnson has turned all the advances from other teams aside, choosing instead to run the Detroit offense under head coach Dan Campbell. It’s a conscious choice by Johnson to stay with the Lions, one that not a lot of folks outside of the team really understand.
On Thursday, Johnson helped explain his reasoning behind eschewing several head coaching opportunities and remaining the OC in Detroit. Speaking before Thursday’s OTA session, Johnson framed his desire to stay with an interesting perspective.
“Something that really resonates with me is – OK, eight openings this past year. What would you set the over/under in three years for how many still have jobs?” Johnson questioned. “I would put the over/under at four and a half. I would say there’s a good chance that five of them are out of jobs in three years. When I look at it from that perspective, if I get the opportunity to go down that road, it’s about how do I get to that second contract? How do I set myself up that the stars need to align?”
Johnson, a 38-year-old father of young children, continued,
“I’m not going to do it just to do it. I love what I’m doing right now. Love it. I love where I’m at, my family loves where we’re at, I love the people that we’re doing it with, and so I’m not willing to go down the other path yet unless I feel really good about how it’s going to unfold.”
That vision for how it might unfold in Washington or Carolina, where ownership issues have been prevalent in recent times, is not something every coaching candidate sees. Or, perhaps more correctly, wants to see. Johnson is secure enough in his current role and his status to not ignore potential red flags that flap in the breeze with other organizations courting him to leave a place he loves.
Or, as Johnson stated,
“That’s what (the NFL) is about. When you get opportunities to take care of yourself, you have to make sure you keep the big picture in mind, and that’s what I’ve tried to do, what’s right for me and my family. That’s really what it came down to for us.”
