Graham Glasgow used odd, and surely unintended, word to describe Ben Johnson

Athletes speak in cliches and generalities so much that those who don't do it stand out. Detroit Lions players generally channel head coach Dan Campbell in avoiding dry, meaningless words, and among them guard Graham Glasgow is lauded by reporters for his frank honesty on multiple topics.

After he returned to the Lions in 2023, and played well (a top-10 graded guard by Pro Football Focus), here's what Glasgow said about heading into free agency in 2024.

"I would love to be back," Glasgow said. "I think I had a really good year, probably top one or two of my career. I would like to make more money than I did this year and I would assume the guys upstairs know and understand that. I feel like stuff like this kind of works. Hopefully, we'll be able to work through it."

Most recently, in talking to Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press about his move to left guard last season to accommodate the signing of Kevin Zeitler to play right guard, Glasgow reinforced how he thought the position move was not a serious thing.

"I'm like, ‘I’m re-signing with the intention on playing right guard,’” Glasgow said. “That's my preference. Like, I really want to play right guard over left guard. He's like, ‘But would you (play left guard) if we needed you to?” And I'm like, ‘Well, I guess I would. I guess.’ But I kept reemphasizing, ‘But I would really rather not.’ And then that ended up happening. It was interesting. It was a good learning experience, but I’m happy that I don't have to do it again.”

Glasgow seems to set to take over for the retired Frank Ragnow as the Lions starting center, but that's a different position move than going from right to left guard (i.e., less of an issue).

Graham Glasgow uses unintended word to describe difference between Ben Johnson and John Morton

Glasgow appeared on 97.1 Ticket's "Costa and Jensen with Heather" this week. Of course one of the hot-button topics around the Lions is John Morton replacing Ben Johnson as offensive coordinator, and how things will be different.

"I think it’s gone pretty smoothly. They’re completely different, I feel like, in the way they go about things," Glasgow said on Tuesday. " I think that John is a little more laid back than Ben was. Ben was a little bit more uppity. I wouldn’t say he was — I feel like they have the same amount of energy, but just it seemed like Ben was more high-energy because he was always getting after it. But things seem to be going well, everyone seems to be picking things up pretty good. I’m happy to see where we’re at.” 

READ MORE: Lions get hit with a major demotion within the NFC North in latest power rankings

"Uppity" is the eye-opening word there. We get an image of someone who is aloof, arrogant, very self-important, etc. The Washington Commanders might describe Johnson that way, after taking every opportunity to slander him when he rejected them during the 2024 head coach hiring cycle.

Within the full context of his comments, Glasgow pretty clearly meant to say Johnson was higher energy or more upbeat than Morton is. He just chose an extra adjective that doesn't make sense. Unless he meant to describe the former Lions offensive coordinator that way....

More Lions news and analysis