In last week’s 47-9 victory over the Cowboys, the Lions seemed as if they were emptying their bag of trick plays on offense.
But speaking to the media on Thursday, offensive coordinator Ben Johnson said he’s not concerned that Detroit has now put so much on tape for others to see.
“Yeah, this game’s been around for a long time and our challenge as a coaching staff — and I say it to the offensive staff quite a bit — is we can run a million different types of plays, and because of that, I don’t like to run the same one twice,” Johnson said in his news conference. “I don’t like to do it within a game, I don’t like to do it within a season. We certainly do have some staples that I will repeat at times, but we’re charged with let’s have a little creativity. Defenses, they’re doing their film study, they’re looking at things, they’re finding, ‘Hey, out of this formation, they’re doing this, that, and the other.’ And we try to mix it up.
“So, from that regard, I’m not worried about putting things on tape. If anything else, it’s just going to help set up the next thing down the road, and yeah, the well is deep in terms of the thoughts.”
Johnson noted that there is plenty of preparation that goes into executing those kinds of trick plays, with details that go back to the spring and training camp. To that end, Johnson noted the coaches can be “very demanding” of the players.
“We’re not just calling plays to call plays because we think they look cool,” Johnson said. “It’s really by design and intent and then our guys carry it the rest of the way.”
They may not use them this week, but Johnson said the Lions have plenty more trick plays to deploy for this season.
“Oh yeah,” Johnson said. “Each and every week we stock up, and so that’s been constant. It just so happened last week that we wanted to unload them.”
