After four years as Ben Johnson’s boss, Lions head coach Dan Campbell is preparing to coach against Johnson on Sunday when Johnson and the Bears come to town. And one thing that Johnson became known for as offensive coordinator in Detroit was trick plays.
But Campbell said trick plays are the least of his concern as he gets ready for Johnson’s offense. Instead, Campbell said he just wants his defense to play fundamentally sound football and not worry about getting fooled.
“You’ll practice one or two things — you do for every opponent — but I don’t really care about trick plays,” Campbell said. “Let’s just handle the meat and potatoes of an offense, a defense, what we think they’re gonna hang their hat on. Let’s stop that first. Let’s worry about that, let’s make sure we’re all on point, and we’ll handle the other stuff.”
Campbell said if the Bears pull off a successful trick play the Lions will need to shake it off and get back to work.
“They may hit us on one. That’s alright, that happens. Get back to the huddle and let’s go on to the next play,” Campbell said.
Asked if Campbell has some trick plays in mind that Johnson drew up while with the Lions but never ran, Campbell said there are a lot of them, but they’re not his main focus in preparing this week.
“We’ve got a menu, a very large menu of things,” Campbell said of the trick plays Johnson can run. “There can be anything. We’ll be good. You can’t sit there and paralyze yourself with what if, what if, what if. The most important thing is, you get in trouble if you can’t handle the nuts and bolts of an offense. If you can’t stop the run, we bleed out explosives, then that’s where you can get in trouble. I’m not worried about the other stuff.”
