Ben Johnson wants "playmakers" on his roster, sees Swift as explosive |
INDIANAPOLIS, I.N. - When he was with the Detroit Lions as their offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson’s offense was filled with talent. He came into the head coaching position with the Chicago Bears that has less talent.
But, Johnson has big ambitions for both sides of the ball, but particularly on defense. “We want playmakers all over the roster. Doesn’t matter - offense, defense, d-line, secondary. We want them all over the place and as an offensive guy, I look at defensive players and if it’s an issue for me to game plan against, absolutely we’d love to have them on our roster as a defensive player to go after our opponents,” Johnson said. “But, it’s not always that easy and really at the end of the day, it comes down to 11 guys doing their job. If you don’t have that star power, that’s okay. You can still be an effective unit and so, we want as many playmakers and stars as we possibly can. But at the same time, we know that complementary football wins in this league. We know that 11 guys playing as one also wins in this league.” Jared Goff is a solid quarterback with the Lions. But, Bears’ quarterback Caleb Williams is more representative of the NFL’s new era of quarterbacks - versatile and regularly making off-schedule throws. While Kansas City Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes is known for this, Williams showed some flashes during his rookie season. That ability is something that really excites Johnson about this upcoming season. “The out-of-structure, the off-schedule, the creation. That’s what stands out the most because that’s really the way that this league’s going right now it seems like. As much as you want to make it (to be a) pure progression from one to two to three, there’s just too much variety. The pass rush is coming down and to have an athlete like Caleb extend the play and potentially find an explosive down the field, that’s what gets me going a little bit. I get excited thinking about that because I haven’t really been around that since I’ve been in the league. But, I’ve been on the other side and I’ve experienced it and it’s demoralizing when you’re on the other side and you’re watching that happen to your defense.” Detroit was known for their dynamic duo at running back with former Bears’ back David Montgomery and Jahymr Gibbs. Despite how good the Lions were at running the ball with Johnson as offensive coordinator, he maintains that an offense does not necessarily need a great running game to benefit from play action, something he commonly used with Detroit. Running the ball is also about the ability of the offensive line to block. How the offense is going to operate, including the run game, reflects how Johnson went about hiring the best people to fill his coaching staff. “You don’t necessarily have to be a great running team to get reaction in the play action game. I think it all starts with what your line up front can do, what your backs do well and you take it from there and what’s so beautiful about the coaching staff that we put together is I didn’t hire a bunch of my friends,” Johnson said. “I went outside of my circle on purpose because I wanted to collect a different mix of experience, of energy, ideas and we’re all going to make it come together and it’s going to be the Chicago Bears going forward and so, it can look a number of different ways. (Running backs coach) Eric Bieniemy has got a lot of experience in the gun run game and what they did in Kansas City and (offensive coordinator) Declan (Doyle) has a lot of success from the Sean Payton tree and (pass game coordinator) Press Taylor has a lot of success from the Chip Kelly, all the way on and so, we’ve got a lot of library, if you will, to draw from and we’ll see it all come together once we get our hands on these guys.” During his time with the Lions, he spent some time with current Chicago Bears running back D’Andre Swift. Swift did not put up the best numbers with Detroit as he only had a total of 1,680 rushing yards over his three years there. However, he did have a knack for finding the end zone as he recorded 25 touchdowns in his three years there; Swift only recorded six touchdowns with Chicago last season. Perhaps his numbers do not accurately reflect his talent as Johnson thinks highly of Swift and his explosive ability. “I think very highly of him. He’s an explosive athlete. There’s a number of different things that he can do both in the running game and the passing game,” Johnson said. “I do think he can help ignite an offense because he’s got that playmaking ability. So, it’ll be fun to start to work together again here this springtime with him.”
