The Detroit Lions are not going to a no-huddle offense under new coordinator Ben Johnson this fall, but head coach Dan Campbell said the hurry-up could be a bigger weapon for his team in 2022.
“We want to be able to do anything and everything that we can at any given time,” Campbell said Saturday at rookie minicamp. “And I feel like what we’re implementing will allow us to do that.”
The Lions ranked in the bottom third of the NFL in no-huddle snaps last season, according to Sharp Football, eschewing a huddle on just over 6% of their offensive plays.
Most of those snaps (46 of 61) came in the fourth quarter, when the 3-13-1 Lions often were trying to erase late-game deficits.
Campbell said he wants the Lions to be able to use tempo more as a weapon this fall, and Johnson is building on changes he helped make to simply the offense; he was elevated to pass game coordinator midway through last season.
“The ability to change our tempo will be big,” Campbell said. “And some of that just comes from verbiage alone, believe it or not. So I just feel like everything’s just going to be so much more streamlined and the ability to, shoot, get on the line if we need to and one word, one call. Whether that’s with high tempo or not. Could be we’re just back on the line, no tempo, we’re not huddling, which that in itself puts stress on the defense.”
A college quarterback at North Carolina, Johnson spent two seasons coaching tight ends and one as an offensive quality control assistant with the Lions before his promotion to coordinator this winter.
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He spent the second half of last season as pass game coordinator after Campbell stripped Anthony Lynn of play-calling duties, and the Lions offense performed significantly better under his influence.
Jared Goff saw his passer rating rise by nearly 20 points. Amon-Ra St. Brown had one of the most productive six-game stretches of any receiver in the league. And the Lions increased their scoring by more than four points per game.
St. Brown said the offense Johnson has installed during early offseason workouts is “definitely” different from the one they ran last year.
“Obviously, there’s a little bit of rollover from last year, but not much,” St. Brown said. “He’s kind of revamped it, made it his own and I’m really — it’s like a new language, it takes a minute but I feel like once we all get it down it’s going to be easy for us.”
The Lions return their top seven offensive linemen and entire backfield from last season, and added more big-play weapons to their passing game.
DJ Chark, the Lions’ top free-agent addition, said he has found Johnson’s offense to be both creative and easy to learn.
“I like it. It’s pretty impressive,” Chark said. “I had four different offensive coordinators in my four years (with the Jacksonville Jaguars) and a lot of the staples are there, but it’s a lot of plays. Variations of those staple plays that are pretty cool that I haven’t necessarily seen.
“And I feel like with the knowledge that he has, as well as Goff, knowing the offense as well and being able to relate it to us is pretty big for us. And it’s not too hard to learn everything. There’s a rhyme and reason for everything.”
Campbell declined to say over the weekend who would call plays this fall, but he said he’s been “impressed” with the work Johnson has done implementing the offense and expects “to be much more efficient just with how we get things in and out of the huddle” this season.”
“You just want to get to the point to where you know that, offensively, you can do anything and everything in your arsenal to put stress on the defense,” Campbell said. “And we don’t want to feel like we’re ever limited by what we’re doing offensively, schematically, verbiage, communication, anything. Our limitations should come from, ‘Well, this player doesn’t do this well.’ Or, ‘This player doesn’t do this well.’ We don’t ever want to feel like we’re the ones holding our offense back as a staff, let’s put it that way. And I feel like this is going to enable us to do the most that we can do.”
Briefly
The Lions signed outside linebacker Natrez Patrick after a tryout at rookie minicamp, and waived linebacker Jessie Lemonier. Patrick signed with the Los Angeles Rams as an undrafted free agent in 2019 and split his first two seasons between the Rams’ active roster and practice squad. He spent last season on injured reserve with the Denver Broncos.
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.