Back in May, a few months after the fog of last season’s NFL coaching carousel had cleared on a frantic process that saw the Washington Commanders select Dan Quinn as their next head coach, Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson spoke at the podium, in essence about why Johnson was not getting ready to run a practice with rookie Jayden Daniels. 

The carousel is a uniquely absurd time on the NFL calendar, when speculation, reporting and inference all get hurled together and can cause us to leap to certain conclusions. Johnson was viewed as a heavy front-runner for the Commanders’ job and the fallout of Johnson pulling out of said job—along with the timing of his backing out—led many to jump to conclusions about Johnson the person. While I will always believe that Johnson was legitimately bothered by the prospect of losing in the NFC title game and felt the legitimate pull of unfinished business (anyone who has ever seen the Lions make a mistake in practice and Johnson’s reaction to it will side with me), which was a main precursor to his backing out of a second Commanders interview, Johnson also spoke at length about his thought process. 

“Something that really resonates with me is, O.K., eight openings this past year. What would you set the over-under in three years, how many still have jobs?” Johnson said. “I’d say there’s a good chance five of them are out of jobs in three years. And so, when I look at it from that perspective, if I get the opportunity to go down that road, it’s about how do I get to that second contract, how do I set myself up that if the stars need to align? I’m not going to do it just to do it. I love what I’m doing right now. Love it. Love it. I love where I’m at. My family loves where we’re at. Love the people that we’re doing it with, and so I’m not willing to go down the other path yet unless I feel really good about how it’s going to unfold.”

While taking anyone at an upper rung of the NFL at their word is dubious, what Johnson said was refreshingly honest. And, on the eve of what may be the most highly anticipated first-time head coaching hiring process in recent NFL history, we shouldn’t have any reason to doubt him. 

Before we get into handicapping the Johnson sweepstakes, it’s instructive to take a look back at the past few cycles. When thinking about the last time we had a coordinator this noteworthy for this long—we first introduced Johnson as a Sean McVay–like offensive mind in our September 2022 future head coaches list—we’d have to go all the way back to when Adam Gase was hired as head coach of the Miami Dolphins. Gase rose to popularity as a devoted offensive coordinator of the Peyton Manning–era Broncos and wound up on John Fox’s Chicago Bears staff for a year. Still, there was a similarly long buildup and anticipation. Gase, for what it’s worth, took a wildly mediocre Dolphins team to the playoffs in his first season and won 10 games. I suppose one could argue that Josh McDaniels as a second-time head coach offered a similarly long runway of will he/won’t he speculation and equally high expectations. McDaniels, for what it’s worth, went 6–11 in his first season with the Las Vegas Raiders and was fired the following year, replaced by Antonio Pierce. 

Anticipation offers no guarantee of success. Johnson’s detractors will note he has a unique personality that some in the industry have speculated would be better served in a smaller market, on top of the fact that he’s come to stardom while working with the best offensive line in the NFL and a phenomenal cast of skill-position players (although those skill-position players may be fantastic, in part, because of Johnson). The draw is obvious, on the other hand. Johnson’s team has set the Lions’ record for most 30-point games in a single season. It set the Lions’ all-time single season scoring record two years in a row. Jared Goff nearly broke an NFL record for almost-perfect QB ratings and three-plus touchdown games. Johnson’s trick play compilation is nearly 10 minutes long and would appeal to owners who love their team highlighted for an attractive, much-discussed, high-scoring style of football. 

Also, Johnson has put his elongated tenure in Detroit to good use, becoming a situational and interpersonal understudy to Dan Campbell, a coach who has rewritten the rulebook in terms of what owners are searching for. 

As one industry source put it, a head coaching job is like a season-long political campaign, and Johnson has been winning the popular vote for the better part of two years now.

While we don’t know what Johnson will do in office, it seems there are a handful of places that make the most sense for him. The where is just as interesting, because it may involve multiple locations, cause multiple teams to have to prepare an A, B and C scenario and may still end with Johnson back in Detroit. Based on numerous conversations and my own insights on the coaching market to this point, here are the teams that make the most sense: 

Let’s imagine that the Jacksonville Jaguars do what everyone expects them to do in moving on from Doug Pederson. Additionally, if Trent Baalke retires or is let go (colleague Albert Breer mentioned retirement a few days ago, and I can second that), Johnson could come in with a possible franchise quarterback in tow, plus the ability to create the alignment he’s searching for with a general manager who shares his vision.  

Owner Shad Khan has aggressively gone after established head coaches in hopes of a faster path to success. After the end of the Gus Bradley era came a troika of retread head coaches: Doug Marrone, Urban Meyer and Doug Pederson. This is Khan’s chance to secure a massive PR win and to go younger at the position. Johnson would be the youngest head coach Khan has ever hired and quite a departure for a franchise that had been a desired Bill Belichick landing spot at this season’s beginning. 

Additionally, for Johnson, Jacksonville is a short, one-hour flight from his home state of North Carolina and is a manageable media market. 

While I am on record saying the New York Giants should give Brian Daboll one more year with a capable veteran QB of his choosing or a younger one to develop, one fact that remains significant in New York is that Johnson and GM Joe Schoen have a strong relationship from a five-year overlap in Miami. 

Daboll, as of the writing of this column, was preparing to have an 8 a.m. ET Monday team meeting to debrief at season’s end. He won the Coach of the Year award in 2022 and oversaw Malik Nabers’s topping of the previous rookie reception record this year (though fellow rookie Brock Bowers had one more), but the Giants went winless in the division for the first time in franchise history and also had the longest losing streak in franchise history (albeit with a combination of Daniel Jones, Drew Lock, Tim Boyle and Tommy DeVito at quarterback).  

Johnson would arrive in East Rutherford with a general manager he could trust and the No. 3 pick in the upcoming draft, with an ability to select his QB of the future or trade for a veteran and get his own nonquarterback franchise cornerstone player. 

The Giants’ situation is a messy one, given that the offensive line needs to be overhauled. There is no immediate and obvious answer at the QB position and this is a down year for college prospects. While one aspect of the job never changes—it is among the most prestigious positions in the NFL—there is a complicated road to success. If John Mara lets go of Daboll, he will hit the decade mark between coaches that have made it to a second contract (Ben McAdoo, Pat Shurmur and Joe Judge all received two or fewer seasons). Johnson has said on the record that his goal is to reach a second contract. 

Now, this part is simply my own thought. Imagine you are Schoen for a second. Schoen is the first outside hire at general manager that the franchise has made since the 1970s. He could either double down on Daboll, the former coach of the year, and try for the quick-fix solution at quarterback that gets the Giants back into the playoffs and staves off talk of a firing (a difficult task). Or, he could swing for the fences and hitch his wagon to someone like Johnson. Again, this is purely speculative, but life in the NFL is the eternal and perpetual buying of more time.

The early feedback on the Bears’ head coaching job is that Chicago wants a dude. Colleague Albert Breer mentioned the “leader of men” type coach, and my sense was someone who, like Campbell in Detroit, could walk into town, grab the place by the throat and start uprooting a recent past defined by a lack of precision and discipline. 

While that sounds like Mike Vrabel, there’s going to be heavy competition for the former Tennessee Titans head coach. While I could see Johnson becoming one of those coaches—again, anyone who has been at a Lions practice can see his intensity and his attention to detail—former Dolphins coach Brian Flores also has a pronounced edge and turned around a tank-worthy Miami team in short order. Lions DC Aaron Glenn is in the division and has former-player gravitas. Green Bay Packers offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich, a former Big Ten All-American and NFL lineman—who drove a beer truck after his playing career before breaking into coaching on the strength and conditioning side and helped supercharge the Packers’ bruising run game with Josh Jacobs—could also be a profile fit there if we’re talking about a certain kind of personality. 

Of course, the Bears have an established power structure in place with multiple layers. Also—just my thought—this job is dangerous for anyone who doesn’t develop Caleb Williams … and fast. Would that provide Johnson the best shot at alignment?

The Kraft family tends to hire what they know. And, at this point, the New England dynasty has produced enough talented coaches to give the Patriots a solid sample size for their own upcoming search. Vrabel, Flores, Daboll—if the Giants decide to let him go—Bill O’Brien, etc. Johnson would represent an unknown for a Kraft empire that had one head coach for two decades and then turned the gig over to that coach’s former linebacker. 

The Patriots are also retaining Eliot Wolf, which would pair Johnson with a GM candidate who, as far as I can tell, he has never worked with. Johnson did work at Boston College from 2009 to ’11, for what it’s worth. 

All that said, Johnson, like Vrabel, would deliver a massive public relations win for the Krafts and pair Drake Maye with the most revered play-caller on the market. We can never underestimate the power of money, willingness and contractual promises. I would be genuinely surprised if the Patriots and Johnson wind up serious about each other, but when it comes to securing the second contract, one sure-fire way to do so is to get the quarterback to the point where he first secures his. 

No opening is perfect. That’s why they are open jobs. If we are creating a rubric based on Johnson’s own words, each of the jobs we mentioned is like buying puzzles at a yard sale. You just know there are missing pieces. 

What has made Johnson so fascinating to this point is his lack of concern over the optics of the situation. He has a set of criteria and the fallback is being the offensive coordinator for Campbell’s Lions—quite possibly one of the most fun, rewarding and set-up-for-success gigs in modern times. While many in the industry often discuss the here-today, gone-tomorrow nature of head coaching opportunities—the fickleness and rarity of the job is the main reason why the New York Jets continue to be able to hire head coaches—Johnson has been able to crack the code. 

For those who constantly ask why we hear so much about Johnson, the reason is that he’s good enough to completely hold up the hiring process and, simultaneously, good enough to call the Lions all the way to the Super Bowl. He’s secure enough to know that he doesn’t have to succumb to pressure and take a job. He’s enough of a curiosity that at least one, but likely more teams, will complicate the process to see whether they can lure him in. 

While there is no guarantee Johnson will be a great head coach, there is a guarantee that he’d be a trophy of sorts for owners who fancy themselves big-game hunters this time of year. That’s why the sweepstakes is worth watching.