Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson was a candidate for head coaching jobs for the second straight offseason and he was seen as a favorite to land one, but he pulled his name out of consideration for jobs in Washington and Seattle after the team’s loss in the NFC Championship Game.
Reports indicated Johnson was looking for more money than teams were offering, but that was not the answer he gave when asked at a Thursday press conference about his decision to stay put. Johnson recounted something head coach Dan Campbell once told the team about what they were trying to build in Detroit and said he wants to continue to “reap the rewards” of that work.
“So 2021 and early part of 2022, he had made this analogy to the team that we were sailing down the ocean and, at that moment, we were in the Arctic,” Johnson said, via Brad Galli of WXYZ. “We were hitting the icebergs, had the storms going on and those were dark days. But he had the foresight, he had the vision of where we were going and where were heading. He assured us ‘Guys, I see where we’re going. The results haven’t been there yet, but the Caribbean’s on the horizon. It’s coming up.’ I’m sitting on the plane thinking back to that. The story of my career has been living in that Arctic for a lot of it. The second time I’ve been to the playoffs, the first time I’d experienced winning games in the playoffs. I think when it boils down to it, I wanted the sunshine a little bit longer. I like what we’ve built here.”
If the sun keeps shining on the Lions offense in 2024, Johnson will remain at the top of head coaching lists around the league. A step backward might not help his cause, but that is obviously a risk he’s willing to take if he felt the right way to avoid another trip to the Arctic was remaining in Detroit a little while longer.
