Ben Johnson Is Already Writing Checks He Can’t Cash
Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Ben Johnson has become the Detroit Lions version of Benedict Arnold. One of the key members of Dan Campbell’s coaching staff the past two years, Johnson was hired by the Chicago Bears to smuggle the Lions’ special sauce to the Windy City.
To those around the NFL, Johnson is a wunderkind. He engineered one of the NFL’s best offenses in each of the past two seasons and maximized the talent around him — including Jared Goff. There’s a reason why the Bears gave him $13 million per season, despite no previous head coaching experience.
But even with his inflated bank account, Johnson is writing a bunch of checks he can’t cash. And it’s starting at the NFL Scouting Combine.
Johnson addressed the media, as all head coaches do in Indianapolis, and gave some seemingly harmless comments on what he was excited about when crafting the Bears’ offense. Any head coach in the league is going to be jacked to work with Caleb Williams, who came out of college as perhaps the most highly-regarded quarterback prospect since Andrew Luck in 2012. But what we didn’t expect is the immediate comparisons to his former quarterback.
“Out of structure, the off-schedule, the creation… that’s what stands out the most because that’s really the way that this league is going right now,” Johnson said. “It seems like as much as you want to make it pure progression, one to two to three, there’s just too much variety. The pass rush is coming down and to have an athlete like Caleb extend the play and potentially find an explosive down the field. That’s what gets me going a little bit. I get excited thinking about that because I haven’t been around that since I’ve been in the league.”
Part of this states the obvious: Goff is a system quarterback that dissects defenses. Williams is a quarterback that can extend plays and take risks downfield. While Lions fans have a hair trigger on being offended when it comes to Goff, Johnson is just stating the obvious.
But then he compared Goff to… Penei Sewell?
Yes, Johnson took things a step further when he made an appearance on Pro Football Talk. When Mike Florio and Chris Simms started yucking it up over Penei Sewell’s failed trick play passing attempt against the Bears, Johnson went on to claim that Sewell threw a better pass than Goff.
“The best part of that was he threw a dime every single time in practice,” Johnson said. “We probably took that for three weeks and every time it was a dime. It was better than some other people, Jared Goff? He was pretty darn good at throwing on the move.”
It’s one thing to give an honest assessment of Goff’s strengths and weaknesses. But did he have to go that far to compare him to an offensive lineman?
Johnson went even further than stating the things Williams can do compared as compared to Goff. He also went ahead and described what it was like to play against a quarterback like Williams — even though he was an offensive coordinator.
“I’ve been on the other side, and I’ve experienced it,” Johnson said of Williams, who led the Bears to 20 and 17 points against Detroit last season. “It’s demoralizing when you’re on the other side and you’re watching that happen to your defense.”
Johnson may be haunted by Josh Allen and Jayden Daniels scoring points at will and his offense having to catch up. But the comments come off as tone-deaf to a team that overcame 13 players on injured reserve to post a 15-2 record and earn the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
It’s why Kerby Joseph and Amik Robertson threw shade back at Johnson on social media after his comments. And posts like these haven’t been an isolated incident. Remember what Amon-Ra St. Brown told Johnson moments after he got the Bears job.
“I told him, I said, ‘For two times a year, Ben, we’re going to f*** you up,” St. Brown said on his podcast in January. “He goes, ‘I’ma f*** you up.’”
St. Brown also called Johnson one of the favorite coaches he’s ever had, but that was before he took a verbal sledgehammer to his quarterback at the combine.
David Montgomery also had a cryptic post toward Johnson after he left for Chicago, which was a completely different tone than when Aaron Glenn took the same position with the New York Jets.
Maybe this is all nothing and these teams just need to move on, but it seems as if Johnson may have bit off more than he can chew. The Bears do have Williams, but they have a ton of holes on their roster that won’t be plugged by top free-agent target Trey Smith after the Kansas City Chiefs franchised him on Thursday.
The Bears also have the same core of players that floundered under Matt Eberflus and now have to play a team that not only poked the Lion (pun intended), but also tried to ether Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur during his introductory press conference.
It’s like the cool kid in school who says a bunch of stuff to get on everyone’s good side and then gets stuffed in a locker. For a guy who was on the staff, he should know that this team runs on emotion, and his comments will only fuel the Lions when he faces Detroit twice a year. Maybe it’s a good thing he’s cashing in on all that goodwill now, because he’s at risk of busting out, at least against his former team.
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