The Detroit Lions offense clicked pretty well, it just happened they weren’t in the shotgun much.
Outside of a couple road games against tough defenses, the Detroit Lions was quite good during the 2022 season. They didn’t always light up the scoreboard, but they often did and they didn’t turn the football over much. After Week 9, quarterback Jared Goff did not throw an interception.
With Ben Johnson coming back as offensive coordinator, the Lions’ offense is lined up to be good again next season. There will certainly be a lot of self-scouting, tweaks and adjustments done this offseason. But the core of the offense worked well, and the basic formula should remain intact.
Many NFL teams are in shotgun formation a lot, if not most of the time, as the spread concepts from college and quarterbacks comfortable in those systems have come into the league. Being in shotgun less than three out of every four offensive snaps has become an outlier.
Detroit Lions one of the lightest shotgun offenses in the NFL in 2022
According to The 33rd Team and Sports Info Solutions, and with a hat-tip to Jeff Risdon of Lions Wire, among quarterbacks with a minimum of nine starts, Goff was tied for the second-lowest percentage of shotgun snaps at 71 percent. Only Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins was lower (70.6 percent).
The Lions surely won’t suddenly become one of the most shotgun-heavy offenses in the league next season. But Johnson certainly knows, or will find out, what worked and what didn’t when they were in shotgun this past season. And, as a correlation, what personnel groupings and alignments worked or didn’t on those plays.
So there may be an opportunity there to make tweaks and catch opposing defenses off-guard next season. And we saw what Johnson was capable of as a creative offensive designer this past season.
So while the Lions won’t be a 90 percent shotgun offense, there is space to possibly do it a little more and be more effective/efficient in that area next season.