There's no bigger Ben Johnson fan than Amon-Ra St. Brown. Now they're foes, with Johnson going from offensive coordinator of the Lions to head coach of the Bears.
"Yeah, we lost Ben," St. Brown said this week on his podcast. "He’s going to the division rival."
St. Brown said that he's happy for Johnson, "one of my favorite coaches that I’ve ever had ... one of the hardest-working coaches that I've been around. Obviously I would want to have him in Detroit forever, but that's not the reality of things."
"I feel like a lot of coaches want to be a head coach at one point in their lives if they can, and this was the best opportunity, I think, for him to leave," said St. Brown. "If he didn’t leave this year, I feel like teams would say, 'Well, what’s wrong with him?’ We had the highest-scoring offense in the league. We lost early, unfortunately, but I feel like this was the year for him to leave, and he took it. So I don’t blame him."
St. Brown said Johnson called him after his departure from Detroit and the two of them enjoyed "some banter back and forth."
"I said, ‘For two times a year, Ben, we’re gonna f**k you up.’ He goes, ‘I’ma fuck you up.’ I said, ‘OK, we’ll see.’ I told him I know all the plays he likes to run, I know all his tendencies. But we were just going back and forth, messing around," said St. Brown. "But it’s funny, he’s like, 'If I want to be the best, I gotta beat the best, right? I said, sh*t. Division-wise, he’s talking."
St. Brown also addressed the speculation that Johnson wasn't fully engaged in the Lions' season-ending loss to the Commanders because he had his mind on his next job.
"Everyone on Twitter, the Lions fans, f**king hating him, talking about, 'He didn’t prepare for this, he was taking interviews in the bye week.' Trust me, I know Ben, he was as locked-in as can be for that game," said St. Brown.
St. Brown went on to say that the Lions remain in good hands under Dan Campbell, who promoted Johnson to offensive coordinator in the first place and has guided the Lions to the best record in the NFC over the last two and a half seasons.
"We got Dan. Dan is, to me, one of the best head coaches in the league, from leadership to, I mean, he’s smart," said St. Brown. "I feel like some people don’t know how smart he really is, but the dude knows X’s and O’s, defense, offense, special teams. He wants to win as bad as the players, if not more.
"Man, he’s the ultimate competitor, so as long as we got Dan, man, we’re good. And he’s going to figure it out, I trust him."