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Detroit Lions offensive coordinator John Morton talks with the media before practice at team's Allen Park Performance Center Lon Horwedel-Imagn Images

Dan Campbell: I Thought John Morton Did Good

Originally posted on Detroit Lions on SI
By John Maakaron | Last updated Sep 8, 2025 3:26 PM ET

This is clearly not the same Detroit Lions offense that Ben Johnson was running.

Maybe because Dan Campbell's squad is about to face the team's old offensive coordinator, and the clear recency bias of watching the Lions' offense struggle to score touchdowns, the yearning for the good old days is growing more and more intense.

Recall, Johnson had the offense scoring touchdowns at a fairly high rate, played fast and called trick plays when needed.

By the way, Tanner Engstrand sure had the New York Jets offense moving the football against the Pittsburgh Steelers. So, it does not necessarily need to take weeks to get an offense humming.

When asked at his Monday media session, Campbell indicated the team needed to master what they do best, prior to all the exotic components showing up and impressing onlookers.

He expectedly gave new offensive John Morton the nod of approval and shared where issues popped up against a division rival.

"I thought he did good," said Campbell. "There are a couple of things that he wants back now. Certainly. But we got to be able to master our bread and butter, before you get to all the other stuff. Because otherwise you can't. The other stuff won't matter if we can't find a way to run the football. more than 2.1 (yards) per carry. That's where everything starts for us. If we can't, then you're out of play action, you're out of everything. Guys will pin their ears back. It makes it harder on some of those guys up front. So, that's where it all begins, really."

The offense was able to move the football, but were not able to execute in the red zone.

Green Bay was able to deploy their coverage scheme with effectiveness, resulting in a lot of check downs or short passes.

"We preached to Goff, If it's not there, check it down. Check it down," Cambell explained. "And even if you're wanting to take one of those -- because we had it called, we had a couple of times where these things are dialed up. You gotta have time to get it out there. I thought he did a good job of knowing, I've got to get rid of this now and taking what was there.

"And so look, it becomes a boring game. And you do have to be patient. But when you do that, you can't miss on third-downs. You can't turn the ball over," Campbell explained further. "Defense has got to get you some stops and has to get some takeaways. Special teams has to do their job. We've got to be able to play field position, and we didn't do really any of those things, at the end of the day."

What was jarring was the noticable difference in the route concepts of Detroit's receivers.

Spacing appeared to be an issue and the receivers struggled to get open. At times, it appeared as though the overall design concepts of the routes was scaled down.

"I didn't feel simplistic," said Campbell. "I think a lot of what we wanted to do was vertical, and that was kind of the whole point. Vertical routes, you then get a chance to take a shot, and if not, you dump it down to your back. And so we really did what we wanted to do. We just weren't able to score touchdowns in the red zone."

It is expected the team will learn and clean up the mistakes. The biggest area to monitor will be the growth of the offensive line, as they had a rough debut.

This article first appeared on Detroit Lions on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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