3x Super Bowl champ shares candid take on Lions HC Dan Campbell’s fate without Ben Johnson
Despite losing one of the top offensive minds in the game to the Chicago Bears, a former Super Bowl-winning guard remains confident the Detroit Lions will be strong on that side of the ball next season.
On Monday’s edition of "Breakfast Ball," three-time Super Bowl champion Mark Schlereth said Lions coach Dan Campbell doesn’t get enough praise for the job he’s done overseeing the offense.
“He understands that offense,” Schelreth said at 0:06. “Dan has got a very heavy hand on the way that offense is structured, the way they run that offense. The guy is very smart when it comes to Xs and Os, how to use personnel to do all those things.”
Schelreth adds that the Lions' offensive success wasn’t just the brilliant mind of former offensive coordinator Ben Johnson.
“So what you’ve seen over the last isn’t just ‘Hey Ben Johnson, take over and run the show’ it is very much a continuation; it’s very much that Dan Campbell is involved in that, so he’ll get back more involved in this offense to make sure it continues to run the way that he has kind of established it from the beginning,” Schlereth added.
Johnson became the Lions' offensive coordinator in 2022 in Campbell’s second season as head coach.
The club was a top-five offensive unit in yards per game in each of Johnson’s three regular seasons as their coordinator before he was hired as the new head coach of the Chicago Bears.
Detroit Lions putting more on Jared Goff’s plate in 2025
Replacing Ben Johnson as the Lions' offensive coordinator next season will be John Morton, who was a senior offensive assistant for the team in 2022.
Under his leadership, the club is expected to put a lot more on the plate of quarterback Jared Goff, and the former first-overall draft pick is welcoming the pressure that comes with that.
“As time goes on, I will certainly have a lot of control,” Goff told Sports Illustrated.
“And something that, if it helps our team be better, helps our offense score points, I’m going to ask for more and keep putting more on my plate.”
Goff is coming off a 2024 campaign that saw him finish fifth in MVP voting, throwing for 4,629 yards and a career-high 37 touchdowns.
The Lions averaged 409.5 yards per game offensively in 2024, ranking second in the NFL, and had two 1,000+ yard receivers in Amon-Ra St. Brown (1,263) and Jameson Williams (1,001).