As I was refining my custom playbook in CFB 25 earlier today, I got to thinking about this question…
Most great offensive minds in football have one concept or one set of concepts that makes them truly elite. For example, my CFB 25 playbook is going to include Josh Heupel’s wide splits and deep choice, Kalen DeBoer’s bunch sets and switch verticals, Steve Sarkisian’s pre-snap motion/mesh/RPO glance concepts, Dave Clawson’s walking mesh RPOs, and believe it or not a bit of Sherrone Moore’s gun wing power sets…among other things. I’m excited about my playbook.
I’ve tried to do this same thing with my Madden playbook and with NFL coaches but everything in that game is so uniform that you can’t really do what I’m trying to do in CFB 25. If I could though, I’d probably use a lot of McVay’s pre-snap motion and quick game, Andy Reid’s/Shane Steichen’s creative RPO concepts, and Shanahan’s personnel packages.
Anyway, I was obviously thinking about what the best concepts in football and thinking about who they come from. I think it’s more than fair to include Ben Johnson in that discussion among the top offensive coaches in football today. So…when you think of Ben Johnson’s offense, what specifically are you thinking of play wise?
The first thing that comes to mind for me is all of his Y-hide concepts that seem to always work for us. One example being the Brock Wright TD against the Jets in 2022 to win that game. Y-hide is run so sparingly though that I wonder if that can really be a playcaller’s “signature” concept.
Another thing that I feel could count is just play action in general.
It may be that he likes to mix things up to the point where there is no signature thing other teams can scheme for. I feel like he adapts to his opponent better than most.
Signature concept? Hmm, in the pass game I would say play action hi-low concepts with a boundary receiver running an in-breaking route a slot or TE running some form of an option route with a two way go. Though is that simply bc that is right in the middle of Goff’s “strike zone”?
Running game? Not sure what specific play but I get really strong Joe Gibbs 80s Redskins vibes from large swaths of our run game.
I think overall the defining characteristic of a Ben Johnson offense seems to be the ability to be functional to good at a far wider variety of concepts than most NFL offenses. I’ve regularly heard opposing players and coaches speak to that and how rare that is and how difficult it is to defends
Gaining his 1st OC job Ben Johnson built the playbook with Goff.
So the passing concepts are all things that Goff does well.
Precise location and timing throws to the middle of the field.
As a long time TE coach Johnson tends to incorporate the TE and use a lot of TE motion in both pass and gap scheme run plays.
This is why I don’t really think of it as a “Ben Johnson offense.” I think of it as Dan’s offense based on what he promised fans from the beginning. He wanted to be multiple in everything that we do and able to adapt our strategy for an opponent to whatever it needs to be week to week. Dan dialed us into this in 2021 when he took over and that’s what he turned over to Ben Johnson. Ben has taken Dan’s offense to another level. But again…to me…its not really “his offense.” But the way he dials up plays and adds his own spin on things is wonderful. And many people “in the know” have spoke about how well Ben ties plays together into strings with a rhyme and reason for every play in the mix. He is not out there wasting plays. And listening to the players, Ben also does a great job at letting them know what the rhyme and reason is for their role on a given play.
Staying with the theme of “being multiple,” that is sustained thru players performing their roles in detail. That is a testament to great leadership as well as players putting in the work. The ability to get the job done on gameday fuels Ben to dial up more and more. Ben also praises Jared Goff for being able to dial up aggressive plays on a gut feeling, knowing that Goff is smart enough to abort the play instead of turning it into a disaster.
Bingo. Honestly this is one aspect of the Pats dynasty I envied… they would cater their game plans - both offensive and defensively - to their opponents such that they would look entirely different from one week to the next. So if a D sucked against the run, they could exploit it. The next week they might throw it 50 times. And if an offense was much better running the ball, they’d make them throw. I think that was their secret sauce for damn near two decades.
The defining characteristics of the coach are precision, communication, teaching, scheming against opponents and using players to their strengths.
So, at the moment, it’s play action and in-breaking routes. It matches our personnel. I feel like it’s a variation of the WCO, especially on the timing and precision aspect of it.
I agree that Ben is flexible, but Dan and Ben have a hard nosed identity where they are going to come out and smack you in the mouth.
They are going to run the ball and make play action passes. Ben doesn’t come out just spraying the ball around from the beginning. Even in shootout games against the Chargers and Seahawks the run to pass ratio was surprisingly balanced.
The Lions threw the ball over 40 times twice in the regular season. Both were out of necessity in losses to Baltimore and GB. It was far more common for the Lions to throw twenty-something passes than forty something.
Dan is all about having an identity and staying with it.
It’s funny you mentioned Gibbs because I watched both playoff games today (the replays were on NFL Network) and I saw them run a lot of counter trays and it didn’t occur to me just how much athleticism they have on that OL, plus they are physical. But Hank Fraley is the OL coach so the physicality and the athleticism shouldn’t have been a surprise
I was gonna say Sean Payton’s offense because what I see the Lions doing it mirrors what Payton did in New Orleans. Efficiency, execution and limiting negative plays. The Lions have done this very well. But it’s also what the WCO used to do with teams that ran it effectively, like the 49ers with Montana/Young and the Packers once Holmgren got there.
Not saying you are wrong because you are not but when Dan fired Anthony whatshisface….umm Lynn, a lot of the offense that you have seen is what Dan was calling after he took over the offensive play calling. So I have hunch that Ben and Goff sat down and watched how things changed once Lynn was gone and they added to what they thought the offense should be from there.
This is an important point that everyone needs to keep in mind when reviewing prospects. Each guy needs to have a certain level of movement skill or else it takes us out of what we want to do as an offense.
I’m not sure what I’d call his “signature concept”, but I believe one of his calling cards is setting up plays for misdirection later. We’ve all seen multiple occurrences where a big play is busted wide open, only to find out that a previous play had been called with the same look in the same formation, only to be ran completely different. Ben is very creative with how he uses these “throwaway” plays early in a game, and then brings them back later looking completely different and catching a defense expecting what they got earlier - only to hit them with something completely different.
