Things haven’t had to change for the Detroit Lions in a while. They’ve been one of the lucky teams that have been good and managed to keep all their coaches. That is until this offseason when they lost a whole slew of guys.
One of the big losses was offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. In the three years that he was in Detroit, he brought a real flavor to the Lions offense that was just incredibly fun. A lot of trick plays and creativity.
Now that he’s gone, there’s been some concern from Lions fans that Detroit could lose that creative edge and kind of become your normal everyday offense. We got a chance to talk with new Lions OC John Morton at the 2025 NFL Combine on Tuesday and here’s what he had to say about that:
“Whatever it takes to win. If Dan wants trick plays, we put trick plays in. He wants to run it so many times we’re going to do that. So we’ll do whatever it takes to win the ball game.”
So there’s that for you Lions fans. Don’t expect that the Lions offense is going to fully abandon the trick plays and the creativity. Morton wants to win and he’s ready to draw up whatever he has to draw up to win.
There are really three big things that Morton wants out of the offense. The first explosive plays.
“I think you got to have explosive plays. You got to be able to do that. I think there’s a certain amount of explosive plays that you need in a game.” Morton said. “I always think like seven eight plays. Explosively is really good.”
The next big thing for Morton was about protecting the ball. This was not the first time we’ve seen him bring this up either. Morton talked about the turnovers the Lions had in the playoff game against the Commanders and how those wound up changing the game for the worse. So it’s going to be a big focus of this offense to make sure turnovers don’t happen as much.
The last thing is about players having input. It’s something that Morton really wants.
“How do we find to get an edge on somebody somewhere? How do we find that, and where is that at? It might be this week. It’s in the run game. It might be this week, it’s in a certain part of the passing game. We have to figure that out. That’s what I love. And, you know, here in Detroit, we’re going to do this thing together. I want everybody’s input, you know, I think that’s important to have everybody’s input, and then we will make the final decision, and I will kind of direct it, you know what I mean.”
That’s a pretty good look into the mind of Morton at this juncture. We’re going to see a lot more of him when it comes time for Minicamp and training camp. Right now he seems like a guy that knows what he’s looking for.