Lions coach Dan Campbell calls protégé Ben Johnson a “snot-nosed computer punk.”
He means it with love.
“That friendship is always going to be there,” the Bears head coach said Wednesday. “I view him like family and I think he would tell you the same thing. That will never change. We have fond memories of back when I was just a young, snot-nosed computer punk — as he likes to call it — in Miami.”
The two met in 2012 when Johnson became a coaching intern for the Dolphins, where Campbell was the tight ends coach. They worked together through 2015, when Campbell left after being the team’s interim head coach. When Campbell was hired to run the Lions, he retained Johnson, his old friend who had been an assistant for Matt Patricia.
None of that will get in the way Sunday when the Bears play the Lions.
“My mind’s going to be about winning the football game,” Johnson said.
Campbell and Johnson have texted as recently as last month. Campbell told Lions reporters this week that Johnson was “always going to be his friend,” but that it wouldn’t matter Sunday.
“We’re going to win this game,” Campbell said. “We have to.”
So do the Bears, who squandered an 11-point lead in the fourth quarter to lose to the Vikings 27-24 Monday night.
Johnson’s knowledge of his former team, though, could give the Bears an edge they didn’t have in Minnesota. The Lions have new coordinators on both sides of the ball, but Johnson knows their personnel.
After helping to revive quarterback Jared Goff’s career — the Rams had to attach two first-round picks and a third-rounder to him in exchange for Matthew Stafford, only for Goff to play the best football of his career — Johnson knows the areas in which the quarterback still struggles. The team’s best offensive weapons — receivers Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams, running backs Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery and tight end Sam LaPorta — all played for him for at least two years. He’ll have a good scouting report on the Lions’ defense, too — all but two of the Lions’ starting defenders in Week 1 played for the team in 2024
To that end, Johnson met with his assistants Tuesday night to go over the Lions.
“A couple things might have popped up,” he said.
His coaches already have a sense of the roster after watching game film, but Johnson can offer a perspective that goes well beyond it.
Johnson’s own evaluation of the Lions’ Week 1 film was drawn to the Packers, who led the Lions the entire time at Lambeau Field and won 27-13. The Green Bay defense was relentless, Johnson said, but the Lions have new players on the offensive line he expects to improve.
Johnson called Ford Field one of the most raucous stadiums in the league. He knows what awaits him there — a fan base upset that he left his job as their hotshot offensive coordinator to become the head coach of a rival.
Johnson considered that fact — “Everything last year ran through my head,” he said — before deciding to take the Bears job anyway.
“My family, myself, we’ve got a lot of strong relationships there in that community — hopefully that continues to stay that way as well,” he said. “But we felt like this was the best opportunity for myself and my family and we were really excited about coming to Chicago.
“At times you have to make tough decisions.”
