Ben Johnson did such a good job coordinating the Lions\u2019 offense that he was hired as head coach of the Bears, and now coaches against the Lions twice a year. Johnson knows the Lions\u2019 offense well, and he says they\u2019ve found the right man to run it in new offensive coordinator Drew Petzing.<\/p>\n
Johnson and Petzing are close friends, and Johnson says Lions head coach Dan Campbell couldn\u2019t have hired a better offensive coordinator than Petzing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s going to blow those players away just from a knowledge standpoint, from a connection standpoint,\u201d Johnson told Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. \u201cI fully expect that offense to be clicking at a high level next year. It wouldn\u2019t surprise me one bit, and I think there\u2019s a reason why Dan, from what I could gather, cast a wide net for the offensive coordinator job and Drew hit the right notes in terms of what he was looking for. That doesn\u2019t surprise me. I could see this being a great fit knowing Dan and knowing Drew both. I think it\u2019s probably a match made in heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson expects the Bears\u2019 defense to have its hands full against the Lions\u2019 offense.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what Drew does is, or at least what he showed in Arizona is he\u2019s going to put his best players in a chance to showcase what they do,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a really smart decision by Dan. It\u2019s going to be hopefully not too big of a headache on us, but I see it being a really good match.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson has coached the NFC North champion for three straight years, as head coach of the Bears in 2025 and as offensive coordinator of the Lions in 2023 and 2024. He thinks Petzing makes his quest for four in a row harder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Johnson did such a good job coordinating the Lions\u2019 offense that he was hired as head coach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-486298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}