Fun, flair and physicality are fueling Detroit Lions' postseason dreams

Jared Goff looked at the Detroit Lions sideline and smiled as offensive coordinator Ben Johnson relayed a play call late in Sunday’s first half.

The Lions were comfortably ahead by two touchdowns at the time, had just forced their second Carolina Panthers turnover in as many defensive snaps, and Goff and the offense were on the plus side of the field looking to put the Panthers away.

Johnson had a way to do it on his call sheet — a reverse flea flicker to Sam LaPorta — and dialed it up.

Goff took a snap under center from Frank Ragnow, tossed the ball right to David Montgomery, who handed it to Kalif Raymond, who pitched it back to Goff as LaPorta snuck out the front side of the formation just as Panthers safety Jeremy Chinn realized what was going on.

LaPorta was sprinting past Chinn down the sideline before Chinn could get any depth in his drop, and 31 yards later the rookie tight end was in the end zone celebrating his second touchdown of the game.

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“We’re trying to (surprise) them,” Goff said. “It’s good. We ran it against Green Bay. I can’t remember if it was last year or two years ago and it was the same thing. It’s just to Sam, wide open and it works.”

Goff had a flea-flicker touchdown pass to Jameson Williams called back by penalty against the Green Bay Packers last season, and he hit another flea-flicker touchdown to Kalif Raymond against the Seattle Seahawks earlier this year.

The Lions are hardly the only NFL team with an affinity for backyard football; San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle scored a touchdown on the same reverse flea-flicker Sunday night.

But 22 games into Johnson’s tenure as offensive coordinator, Sunday’s game and LaPorta’s touchdown are reminders of just how lucky the Lions are to have his creative genius on their sideline.

Along with the flea flicker, the Lions converted a third-and-6 Sunday on a direct snap to Montgomery that went through Goff’s legs and found innovative ways to get the ball in their playmakers’ hands on screens (by splitting Montgomery wide and motioning him towards a phalanx of blocking receivers) and short passes to the flat (with timely use of tempo that caught the Panthers off guard).

The Lions are deceptively different on offense, using jet motions and personnel tweaks to put a new twist on old plays. They scored a season-high 42 points Sunday while navigating a list of injuries that would have been catastrophic to most other teams; leading receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown missed the game with an abdominal injury, and rookie running back Jahmyr Gibbs pulled his hamstring late in practice Friday.

And they’ve manufactured the right mix of fun, flair and fundamentally-sound football to become the hottest ticket in the NFL.

“I’ve learned to never be surprised by things that we’re going to put in the game plan,” left tackle Taylor Decker said. “We (had the snap between the legs), we had the pitchback to Jared for the touchdown to Sam. I mean, we know we’re going to have plays like that and (Ben) says, ‘I’m going to call them.’ Those plays are going to get called because if you catch a defense kind of off guard or you can steal some yardage, get a chunk play, maybe a touchdown off a turnover, let’s throw this thing, those are huge.”

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Decker said Johnson is “always looking to be on the cutting edge” of new concepts that give the Lions a leg up offensively, and that’s only one of the qualities that have endeared him to his players and will make him the hottest coaching commodity in the NFL this winter.

“I just have a lot of respect for him because he has gained the trust of his players,” Decker said. “Like, whatever he asks us to do, we’re going to go do it and we know that he’s going to put us in the positions to succeed. Even if it’s a hard job and if you have the hard job and you execute it, it’s going to help everybody else around you so it’s just you’re doing it for your teammates. Yeah, the Xs and Os, I could get into all that. I mean, he’s obviously brilliant at that, but just the way he interacts with players, I think that’s one of his strongest characteristics.”

The Lions are tied with the Dallas Cowboys as the fifth highest-scoring team in the NFL since the start of the 2022 season, behind only perennial Super Bowl contenders the Kansas City Chiefs, Buffalo Bills Philadelphia Eagles and 49ers.

Johnson has pushed the right buttons for that to happen, obviously, but he’s not the only reason for the Lions’ offensive success.

Brad Holmes has assembled the right mix of players, who are the ones executing on the field, and Dan Campbell has made sure that fun and physicality are equal parts of the Lions’ philosophy.

“We’ll always be known, in my opinion, as a tough team,” Campbell said Monday. “We should be a tough, physical team, offense, defense, special teams, but if you’re just tough and you’re just physical and you have no creativity, you’re not going to do anything with it. You’ll bang away, but I think that gives you just a little bit of an edge.”

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As Campbell spoke about players having “a good time” being able “to do something a little bit out of the norm” and the eye candy the Lions confuse opponents with on offense, he raised his left hand to offer an imaginary piece of it then brought his right across in a violent slapping motion.

“That’s the old, ‘Hey look here,’” he said.

“I think our guys have come used to that and that’s what I want is that, look, if we’re going to go for it on fourth, nobody’s batting an eye,” Campbell said. “There’s not pressure, this is part of what we do. And this is just another play for us to convert. And when we dial up some of the plays that we dial up, a little bit of the smoke-and-mirror players, our guys know, we’ve repped them enough to where they figure it out. You give them multiple looks, you just, you keep repping it and they’ve done it enough to where they’ll make it right. ... Our guys just, they understand. And you feel very confident about it.”

At 4-1, the Lions are brimming with confidence and starting to look a lot like another one of the NFL’s best teams.

The 49ers with Kyle Shanahan are the class of the league right now, with an overpowering defense and one of the very few offenses that combines physicality and sleight of hand as well as the Lions.

They can run the ball on anyone and with anyone, and they use their rushing attack to set up one of the league’s most diverse passing games.

The 49ers destroyed the Cowboys, 42-10, Sunday in the NFL’s showcase game, and Campbell admitted Monday he tuned in and let his mind wander about what could be.

The Lions and 49ers don’t play in the regular season, and if they meet in the playoffs it likely won’t be until the division or conference championship round. That’s a long way off, but the way the Lions are playing, it’s starting to feel close enough to touch.

“For me, it puts everything in perspective,” Campbell said of the game. “Look, we got a long way to go, it’s a long season, we got Tampa coming up (this week). But when you watch that, man, you just — you see what it is. You see what it is, and so I think it gives you great perspective. It gave me great perspective watching it.”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

Next up: Buccaneers

Matchup: Lions (4-1) at Tampa Bay (3-1).

Kickoff: 4:25 p.m. Sunday; Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, Florida.

TV/radio: Fox; WXYT-FM (97.1), WTKA-AM (1050).

Line: Lions by 3.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Fun, flair and physicality are fueling Detroit Lions' playoff dreams