Dan Campbell Has More on His Plate Than Worrying About Ben Johnson’s Trick Plays

Ben Johnson took the job as Chicago Bears coach knowing that he’d have the chance to go against the Detroit Lions twice a year. After showing that he can be one of the best offensive coordinators in football during his partnership with Dan Campbell, the new opportunity will provide plenty of chances to showcase some of his trademark trickery. But it sounds like Campbell isn’t sweating the possibility of Johnson’s Bears throwing everything but the kitchen sink and Annexation of Puerto Rico at them during Sunday’s matchup.

“Well, you’ll practice one or two things,” Campbell told reporters on Wednesday when asked about fancy plays. “You do for every opponent. But I mean, I don’t really care about trick plays. Let’s just handle the meat and potatoes of an offense, a defense, what we think they’re going to hang their hat on? And 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 with our rules. You got to have proper eyes, man. You know, we give you those rules for a reason. And look, they may hit us on one that’s all right, you know, that happens. Get back in the huddle. Let’s go to the next play.”

The Lions’ leader has cause for focusing on sustenance instead of chocolate frosting after his team was thoroughly dominated in all phases of the game in a Week 1 loss to the Green Bay Packers. He further explained that if you start going down a rabbit hole of all the trickeration Johnson could present then the basics won’t be as sharp.

“No, we’ve got a very large menu of things,” he added. “So, you know, there can be anything, but we’ll be good. I mean, you can’t sit there and paralyze yourself with what if? What if? What if? What if? The most important thing is you’ll get in trouble if you don’t handle the nuts and bolts of an offense. If you can’t stop the run, you know, we bleed out explosives, then that’s where you can get in trouble. So I’m not worried about the other stuff from that.”

Over on the other side, Chicago’s first-year head coach has reason to center his focus on the big things after the Bears squandered a fourth quarter lead to the Minnesota Vikings on Monday Night Football. Or that’s exactly what he would want Campbell to think.