After four years as Ben Johnson’s boss, Lions head coach Dan Campbell is preparing to coach against Johnson on Sunday when Johnson and the Bears come to town. And one thing that Johnson became known for as offensive coordinator in Detroit was trick plays.
But Campbell said trick plays are the least of his concern as he gets ready for Johnson’s offense. Instead, Campbell said he just wants his defense to play fundamentally sound football and not worry about getting fooled.
“You’ll practice one or two things — you do for every opponent — but I don’t really care about trick plays,” Campbell said. “Let’s just handle the meat and potatoes of an offense, a defense, what we think they’re gonna hang their hat on. Let’s stop that first. Let’s worry about that, let’s make sure we’re all on point, and we’ll handle the other stuff.”
Campbell said if the Bears pull off a successful trick play the Lions will need to shake it off and get back to work.
“They may hit us on one. That’s alright, that happens. Get back to the huddle and let’s go on to the next play,” Campbell said.
Asked if Campbell has some trick plays in mind that Johnson drew up while with the Lions but never ran, Campbell said there are a lot of them, but they’re not his main focus in preparing this week.
“We’ve got a menu, a very large menu of things,” Campbell said of the trick plays Johnson can run. “There can be anything. We’ll be good. You can’t sit there and paralyze yourself with what if, what if, what if. The most important thing is, you get in trouble if you can’t handle the nuts and bolts of an offense. If you can’t stop the run, we bleed out explosives, then that’s where you can get in trouble. I’m not worried about the other stuff.”
The Vikings’ fourth-quarter comeback win over the Bears on Monday Night Football drew a big audience.
ESPN announced that the game reached 22.1 million viewers, an 8 percent increase over the audience for last year’s Monday night opener, which was the Jets against the 49ers.
The total viewership figure includes everyone watching the main broadcast on ESPN and ABC, the ManningCast on ESPN2, the Spanish-language broadcast on ESPN Deportes and the NFL+ stream. There was no breakdown announced for how many viewers watched on each of those platforms.
ESPN also announced that its Monday Night Countdown pregame show drew 1.76 million viewers, up 39 percent from Week One last year.
Detroit’s left tackle has an injury concern, but he wants to play on Sunday.
Taylor Decker did not participate in Wednesday’s practice with a shoulder injury, but told reporters that he’s hopeful he’ll be able to play in the Week 2 matchup against Chicago.
“Just got some stuff that I’m dealing with,” Decker said, via Eric Woodyard of ESPN.
Decker, 32, made his first Pro Bowl last season. Right tackle Penei Sewell would be one candidate to replace him on the left side, if necessary.
Cornerback Terrion Arnold was a full participant in practice after it was noted that his groin injury was not considered serious. Safety Daniel Thomas (hand) was also a full participant.
Linebacker Jack Campbell (ankle) did not participate.
Linebacker Trevor Nowaske (elbow) and running back Sione Vaki (hamstring) were both limited.
A weekly appearance with Paul Allen, voice of the Vikings, on KFAN addressed one item of unresolved business from the memorable Monday night matchup between Minnesota and Chicago.
The Bears, as Peyton Manning pointed out in real time, should have kicked the ball out of bounds to keep the clock on the right side of the two-minute warning. This would have operated as an extra timeout for the Bears, who at the time had only one.
If the Bears had kicked out of bounds, what if the Vikings had declined the penalty and forced a re-kick? Could the Bears and Vikings have sparked a perpetual loop of kickoff out of bounds/re-kick that, in theory, would still be going?
Fortunately, no. Per the league, the Vikings could not have declined the penalty and forced a re-kick.
The two choices for the receiving team when a kickoff goes out of bounds is to take the ball 25 yards from the spot of the kick (which usually translates to the receiving team’s 40) or to take the ball where it went out of bounds. Which means that the Vikings would have gotten the ball with 2:02 to play, giving the Bears an extra timeout, courtesy of the two-minute warning.
Of course, that would have opened the door for something daring from the Vikings. A play-action pass, for example, and a deep shot to receiver Justin Jefferson. As long as the play takes at least two seconds, it wouldn’t have mattered if the Vikings had thrown an incomplete pass.
On Monday night, Bears coach Ben Johnson wasted a challenge — and blew an ultimately critical timeout — after Vikings tight end T.J. Hockenson caught a pass and, with his knee still on the ground, had the ball punched out.
The ruling on the field was correct. Once the ball carrier’s knee is down, any contact from a defender (even on the ball and only the ball) ends the play.
Johnson has since taken responsibility for the ill-advised challenge.
“I thought I saw knees up, and so that’s on me,” Johnson told reporters. “I’ve got to do a better job listening to the guys up top. You know, I get influenced a little bit for the first time with the people around me, and I’ve just got to stay true to the process.”
It’s a great point, and an important lesson. Especially if the guys around Johnson were calling for a challenge not because Hockenson’s knee was up, but because they thought the ball was punched out before Hockenson was touched.
The end result of the miscue was that the Bears had less time to get down the field for a potential overtime-forcing field goal attempt.
