DETROIT — Perhaps one of the best compliments you can give this Detroit Lions team is that it was hard to tell which offense Ben Johnson was coaching Sunday.
That’s been the goal for this Lions team since January — the month Johnson left to coach the division rival Bears. For there to be little to no drop-off. Players and coaches in Detroit had to talk about his departure all offseason. They spent the entire week answering questions about his return to Ford Field and what it would be like to face him.
Turns out, it looked similar to a lot of the games Johnson coached for this team over the years. Imagine that.
“I’ve said this all along, this train keeps rolling,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said after the Lions’ 52-21 win over the Bears on Sunday. “We got plenty here and it always is going to start with the players.”
That’s been Campbell’s default message for the last eight months or so, whenever he’s been asked about Johnson — one of his closest friends in this profession. The Lions appreciate his contributions over the years. Johnson was undoubtedly part of the turnaround. He led the Lions to three straight top-5 scoring offenses. He turned down other jobs in back-to-back offseasons to remain in Detroit for a Super Bowl run, until he was presented with an offer he couldn’t refuse. This is a business, and Johnson made one he felt was best for him.
But at the same time, if you don’t think the Lions wanted this one to quiet some of the noise associated with losing Johnson, you don’t know this group.
“We knew coming into this game that this is personal,” Lions safety Brian Branch said. “We felt like we’d been betrayed from the staff to the players. And we love Ben — we still love Ben. He’s a great coach, he’s a great mastermind. But yeah, it was time to get after him.”
“I think a lot (of us), especially the offense, we were fired up,” Lions WR Amon-Ra St. Brown said after the game. “Ben, what he did for us, I mean, we’ll never take that for granted. He was a big part of what we did here. But just him being over there, we wanted to show that we can still — us as players — we can still make it happen. … We wanted to go out there and put on a little show.”
Johnson had a front-row seat for the show, starting on the Lions’ opening drive. Five plays, 60 yards, capped off by a Jahmyr Gibbs rushing touchdown.
It took the Lions 59 minutes and 5 seconds to score a touchdown in Week 1. It took them a little less than three minutes to do the same Sunday. It was the sort of drive that let you know what kind of game this was going to be. It had the Lions looking like themselves. And it was more of the same from there.
The Lions led 28-14 at the half.
Jared Goff was magnificent. He completed 23 of his 28 attempts for 334 yards and five touchdowns — playing turnover-free football. Three of those five touchdowns were courtesy of St. Brown, who finished with nine receptions for 115 yards. Jameson Williams tacked on 108 yards and a touchdown on two receptions. Sam LaPorta and Brock Wright helped move the chains. Isaac TeSlaa continued to prove he only needs one hand. Gibbs and David Montgomery each found the end zone.
The Lions found the end zone seven times en route to a 52-point outing. They set a franchise record with 8.8 yards per play Sunday — and that was after pulling starters in the fourth quarter. They produced a game with at least 500 total net yards, five passing touchdowns and two rushing touchdowns for the first time in franchise history. They got the ground game going with 177 rushing yards. They went 6-of-7 in the red zone. They produced the third-highest explosive pass rate and fifth-highest explosive run rate in Week 2 (ahead of Sunday night’s contest). That was as complete an effort as you’ll find from this group.
Johnson, of course, doesn’t coach defense in Chicago. That would be Bears DC Dennis Allen — a coach Campbell and Lions OC John Morton know well, dating back to their days together on Sean Payton’s staff in New Orleans.
Perhaps that narrative wasn’t discussed enough.
“I know Dennis Allen,” Morton said Thursday. “Nothing I haven’t seen.”
The few times the broadcast cut to Morton calling plays in the booth Sunday, he didn’t look like a coach getting too high or too low. It mirrored his demeanor this week. He said there was no panic. He said Detroit’s mistakes were correctable. On the surface, it might’ve come off as a coach trying to downplay a rough debut. But that’s how Morton operates.
He and Campbell are problem-solvers by nature. They instead focused on what they could fix. Maybe it was the competition, but it sure looked like they fixed a lot.
“I think it’s just … the want to respond,” Goff said. “The want to right a wrong and fix things and do it better in practice, and the urgency to improve. I think that Dan’s always talking about, certainly early on in the year, is just how can we get better every week? And sure, we lost the first week, but we got better this week. We did.”
The other side of this game, of course, was how Johnson’s offense in Chicago would look against his former team. In theory, he had the answers to the test. He went against this defense for years, and was set to face a rookie DC in Kelvin Sheppard, rather than Aaron Glenn.
Again, you wouldn’t know it. Not how this group carries itself. And not based on what we saw Sunday.
Last week, lingering in the visitors’ locker room after the loss to Green Bay, Lions safety Kerby Joseph was asked about facing Johnson for the first time.
“Ben gonna do what he do,” Joseph said, “and I’m gonna do what I do.”
Joseph did what he’s been known to do. In the second quarter, pressure was barreling down on Bears QB Caleb Williams. Williams escaped a sack from Aidan Hutchinson, then lofted a ball in the direction of seemingly no one. Except Joseph.
The All-Pro safety came down with the interception — his first of the season. What happened next was, well, personal. He gathered players on this defense to run “Stumblebum” — the now-famous trick play the Lions ran vs. the Bears that both frustrated and impressed Chicago’s brass — right in front of Johnson.
“We did it on the fly,” Joseph said.
“He just told me (to) go for the pass,” said Amik Robertson, on the receiving end of the celebration. “I ain’t know what he was gonna do, and that was one of the craziest celebrations ever, man. … I caught the ball and Ben was right there. I gave him a little stare-down or whatever.”
Stumblebum: Zupe’s Edition@JKERB25 | #ForTheCelly pic.twitter.com/fXoMRVkJS8
— Detroit Lions (@Lions) September 14, 2025
That they did. Joseph and Branch recorded both takeaways for this Lions’ defense, playing closer to the standard Sheppard holds them to. The Lions also recorded multiple fourth-down stops.
Give Sheppard’s defense credit. The Lions were able to generate enough pressure with four and largely kept Williams in the pocket. Hutchinson recorded his first sack of the season, and the Lions recorded four on the afternoon. It looked closer to the defense this unit can be when it’s playing up its standards. This was a much-needed tune-up, particularly as the Lions get ready for Lamar Jackson and the Ravens on “Monday Night Football” next week.
The walk to midfield for the postgame embrace was a slow one for Johnson. His head dipped on the way there. The handshake lasted mere seconds. He was left to answer questions about what went wrong for his Bears — something he’ll have to get used to after losses.
“It’s always good to see Dan Campbell,” Johnson said, “but not when you are on the losing side like that.”
The feeling is new for Johnson, but not for Campbell. This is what the Lions do. This is what we’ve come to expect from them — and Campbell expects these types of efforts when the Lions are playing up to their potential.
No matter who’s calling plays.
“There’s always going to be this, ‘We don’t have the rhythm offensively because we lost Ben or we’re not as good because we lost AG …’” Campbell said. “Ultimately it’s, ‘Do you have the coaches?’ Yes. ‘Do you have the players?’ Yes. We just gotta clean a few things up. … That’s really what we focused on.”
(Top photo of Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jahmyr Gibbs: Nic Antaya / Getty Images)
