Back in training camp, Ben Johnson said one of his goals this year was to help Jared Goff "have the best season of his career." Over the Lions' recent surge, Goff might be playing the best football of his life.
He's coming off arguably his best game in Detroit, torching the Jaguars for 340 yards and two touchdowns on a day Johnson's offense was darn near unstoppable. "Goff was on fire," Dan Campbell said this week. And Johnson is becoming a hotter and hotter name around the NFL as a future head coach.
"He’s an incredible communicator," Goff said Tuesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "He and I are on the same page on really everything. Throughout the week we talk constantly, constantly figuring out how we want to do things. Most of it’s him, but he’ll take my ideas here and there.
"How good he is at communicating, how well he prepares not only me but our whole offense, getting everyone ready, he’s a very smart guy. But he’s a lot of fun to play with, he’s a lot of fun to work with. I’m going to stop pumping him up too much, because I know what that leads to, but he’s a hell of a coach."
In Johnson's first season as an NFL coordinator and play-caller, the Lions have a top 10 passing attack and a top 10 rushing attack fueling an offense that ranks sixth in the NFL in scoring. Goff has a top 10 passer rating (min. 10 starts) and a top 10 total quarterback rating. He's thrown eight touchdowns to one interception over his last six games, during which time he has a passer rating of 101.4, better than his best season with the Rams.
This is the quarterback the Rams fell in love with in the draft, then all over again in his first couple seasons under offensive mastermind Sean McVay. This is the quarterback they signed to a $134 million extension coming off a trip to the Super Bowl. It is not the quarterback they couldn't get rid of quickly enough just two years later. These days, the mastermind is Johnson.
"The only guy I can compare him to is Sean," said Goff. "They’re both really good, but Ben has allowed me to have a lot of say and a lot of input and have a lot of my fingerprints on this offense. He trusts me and I trust him."
This trust was born in the second half of last season when Johnson took over Detroit's passing game and jolted Goff back to life. It was solidified in the spring when they collaborated on their offensive vision for 2022. Together, they dissected film of Goff's best days with the Rams in search of schemes and concepts they could exploit. And it's only grown stronger this season as they continue to light up the scoreboard. In his last 17 games under Johnson, Goff has a passer rating of 98.95.
In a league where quarterback-coordinator compatibility isn't always easy to find, Dan Campbell and the Lions have found it.
"You have to have a good rapport with your quarterback and your quarterback needs to know what you’re thinking and why you develop the game plan the way you do," Campbell said Tuesday. "What are we trying to attack, how are we attacking them? What are our strengths, what are our weaknesses? And when something’s being called, (your quarterback) has to understand, this is why we’re calling it. We’re calling it to attack this coverage or this player with our player.
"And on the flipside of that, as the play-caller, you have to have a really good understanding of your quarterback and where he’s at in the game and how he feels. There is a give and take there, but they do, man, they have a great relationship. They have a lot of trust in each other and they have a real good feel of what each other is looking for."
We'll see how long this partnership lasts. Johnson, 36, has bigger things in his future, as soon as next season. For now, he doesn't want to talk about it -- and for good reason, neither does Goff.
"I feel like I'm playing the best football of my career right now," he said. "Ben and I have a good thing going."