Ben Johnson stood on the sideline a few feet from Detroit Lions special assistant Chris Spielman, a white sheet of paper in one hand and a black walkie talkie with a yellow antenna in the other.
As Jared Goff huddled his offense during 11-on-11 drills Thursday, Johnson held the walkie talkie up to his mouth and relayed a play call to the Lions quarterback while head coach Dan Campbell, a whistle in his mouth and hands on his knees, watched intently from behind the offensive line of scrimmage.
Campbell has declined to say who will call offensive plays for the Lions this fall, but if the third practice of organized team activities is any indication, Johnson could handle those duties for the first time in his career.
Johnson met with quarterbacks Goff, Tim Boyle and David Blough before each stepped into the huddle during an offensive installation period Thursday, while Campbell stood on the adjacent field watching his defense at work.
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When the offense and defense came together, Johnson called every play from one of two sidelines as Campbell occasionally scribbled notes on his own practice plan.
Campbell called offensive plays the second half of last season, and did a commendable job. The Lions won their only three games of the year after Campbell stripped Anthony Lynn of play calling duties and with Johnson serving as pass game coordinator.
The Lions could take a similar approach this fall. Campbell has not ruled out that possibility, and no matter who relays the calls, the offense will be built in his image.
But watching from afar, Thursday’s practice seemed like a dry run for what we’ll see this season.
“Ben’s a super smart guy and obviously we’re in the vanilla stages of installing this,” left tackle Taylor Decker said. “Let’s just get out there, let’s see if we can break the huddle, run a play, get lined up. But as it develops I’m really excited to see what this offense can be.”
More observations from Thursday’s practice
• Decker was one of a handful of Lions players who did not practice Thursday. He still is dealing with the residual from a foot injury he suffered in the Lions’ season-ending win over the Green Bay Packers in January, though he said his absence was precautionary and he would be playing if it was the regular season.
Jeff Okudah (Achilles), Jerry Jacobs (knee), T.J. Hockenson (sick), Jameson Williams (knee), James Mitchell (knee), Chase Lucas, Derrick Deese Jr. also were non-active or extremely limited participants, and I did not see Romeo Okwara (Achilles), Michael Brockers or John Penisini, among others.
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Okudah did line up with the first-team defense during walk-through, and he looked healthy running around the field.
• OTAs, as a reminder, are voluntary.
• Campbell said he wants to put his team in more competitive situations this spring than he did last year in his first season as coach. To that end, the Lions finished the team portion of Thursday’s practice with an end-of-half situation, a first-and-10 from their own 40 with 45 seconds on the clock, and it wasn’t a great showing by the offense.
Goff had his first pass from scrimmage batted down at the line of scrimmage and he threw wide of Brock Wright on his second attempt. Goff threw complete to DJ Chark on third-and-10, when coaches ignored a would-be sack by blitzing cornerback A.J. Parker.
With a fresh set of downs, Goff threw three more incompletions — Josh Reynolds dropped the first, and Will Harris had good coverage on the third — before Austin Seibert missed a long field goal.
Mike Hughes intercepted Tim Boyle on the first play from scrimmage for a would-be pick-six with the second-team offense and defense on the field — Boyle’s throw appeared to be behind Kalif Raymond — and Riley Patterson missed another field goal after David Blough and the third-team offense came on the field.
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• Rookie first-round pick Aidan Hutchinson played with the third-team defense during Thursday’s competitive period, but that shouldn’t last long. Hutchinson had would-be sacks on three straight plays, destroying the offense from an interior rush position. At least two of his sacks came against undrafted rookie guard Zein Obeid.
Between Hutchinson, Charles Harris, Romeo and Julian Okwara, Austin Bryant and Josh Paschal, the Lions have enough versatile pass rushers to put together some interesting third-down packages this fall.
• The Lions kept their rookies and many first-year players on one field during Thursday’s installation period, and had veterans on a separate field. With Decker out, Penei Sewell played left tackle and Matt Nelson played right tackle with the first-team offense.
Frank Ragnow was back at center after missing most of last season with a foot injury. Ragnow did line up in a guard spot during the Lions’ pre-practice warm-up routine, when all 13 linemen line up side by side and simulate a snap. Jonah Jackson, Evan Brown and Ryan McCollum handling snapping duties for a few plays during the drill.
Ragnow is the Lions’ starting center, to be clear. He’s a Pro Bowler at the position and one of the best centers in the league. But Jackson filled in at center for part of one game last season when Brown was out with injury and it makes sense to get him occasional snapping work.
• Defensively, Harris saw most of his time at cornerback Thursday, playing opposite Amani Oruwariye with the first-team defense. Campbell said he sees Harris as a cornerback/safety combo player, so it will be interesting to see where Harris gets most of his reps the next few months. On Thursday, it was Tracy Walker and DeShon Elliott playing safety with the top unit. Interestingly, second-year defensive back Ifeatu Melifonwu got some time at safety, too.
Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn said last year he saw Melifonwu as a position-versatile player, but he did not want to overwhelm Melifonwu by having him play multiple spots as a rookie.
The Lions have more depth at cornerback (Oruwariye, Okudah, Jacobs, Harris, Hughes, Parker, etc.) than they do safety, so perhaps Melifonwu’s future is in the end.
• As Campbell noted, there’s a fine line to walk in OTAs when it comes to being too competitive, and the Lions had one mini-skirmish that was quickly put out in practice Thursday. I did not see how it started, but offensive lineman Logan Stenberg appeared to be in the mix.
“You’ve got to be careful being physical, anything to where guys are impeding each other, all of those things,” Campbell said before practice. “But yet, I do know I want to get us in more competitive settings early. … That would be one change that I know I wanted to identify, is we’ve got to get to that earlier. We’ve got to start pressing our guys earlier and feeling a little bit more pressure earlier and see how we respond or get comfortable with being uncomfortable if you will.”
• Finally, Raymond showed off his shiftiness twice during a special teams drill near the end of practice that is one of coordinator Dave Fipp’s favorites. In the drill, a return man goes one-on-one against a coverage man in a coned-in area on the field. The return man has to escape the box without being tagged.
Raymond made an impressive juke on Parker early in the drill, then left Jarrad Davis on the ground grasping at air in the final rep of the drill. Davis appeared to ask to go against Raymond, and when he whiffed badly in his tag attempt, it sent Raymond’s teammates into a frenzy, with one even falling to the ground and pretending to flail for a tackle as if he was mimicking Davis.
Undrafted rookie Kalil Plimpton and Tom Kennedy also had good return reps in the drill and should compete for the return job with Raymond this summer.
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.