Matt Ryan: Jared Goff should be 'happiest guy' in NFL with Lions OC Ben Johnson returning

LAS VEGAS — Matt Ryan had the best season of his career in 2016 at age 31.

He won NFL MVP. He led the Atlanta Falcons to the Super Bowl. He threw for a whisker under 5,000 yards and led the league in passer rating and yards per attempt.

With Ryan still in the prime of his career, the Falcons seemed set to be NFC contenders for some time — but the mastermind of their offense, Kyle Shanahan, left after that season to take the San Francisco 49ers head coaching job and the Falcons have had just one winning record in the seven years since.

Ryan threw for 17% fewer yards, about half as many touchdowns, and nearly double the interceptions in 2017, with a new offensive coordinator, Steve Sarkisian, calling plays.

And while Ryan, now a CBS analyst, said Tuesday there were other factors at play in the Falcons’ regression, it’s impossible to ignore the role the coordinator change played in their swift decline — especially given what Shanahan has gone on to accomplish in San Francisco.

The 49ers will play the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 58 on Sunday at Allegiant Stadium, their second trip to the game in five years.

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“I think Steve Sarkisian did a good job coming in,” Ryan said. “We went to the playoffs the year after Kyle left, and Sark was with us for two years. We played pretty good offensive football, both those years.

“(But) it’s a change regardless. We had a lot of — we had some continuity on the staff of guys that were with Kyle, but yeah, there’s a change and a learning process. It takes time. It does take time.”

The Detroit Lions won’t have to navigate the same sort of change Ryan experienced this offseason after retaining all three coordinators in a welcome surprise.

Offensive coordinator Ben Johnson interviewed with five teams before telling the Lions he would be back for a second season calling plays last week. Defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn had four interviews and was a finalist for the Washington Commanders job. And special teams coordinator Dave Fipp will be back for a fourth season in Detroit.

Johnson is tied for the longest-tenured offensive coordinator in the NFL, according to data maintained by ESPN reporter Mike Clay, while Glenn is tied for the league’s third longest-tenured defensive coordinator, giving the Lions enviable continuity on their coaching staff.

“That’s huge,” said Brian Billick, who won a Super Bowl as head coach of the Baltimore Ravens in 2000. “That’s continuity that you can carry on and that means that you get to start from Day 1, from where you left off. … And that’s a great thing as a coach. They now bring back whatever majority of the team they bring back. ‘OK, I know you guys know what it looks like now. Cause we’ve been there together, so that’s the minimum now for us going forward.’ And you can start from that and build on from that rather than have to do a whole lot of changes and add-ons and the like. That’s a great place to start from.”

Johnson’s return in particular was considered a big win for the Lions, given the success of their offense the past two years.

The Lions finished top-five in scoring, rushing, passing, total, and red zone offense this season, they rank third in the NFL in points scored since the start of the 2022 season, and they boast a considerable amount of offensive talent in Jared Goff, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jahmyr Gibbs, Sam LaPorta and one of the league’s best offensive lines.

Widely considered one of the top candidates on this year’s job market and once viewed as the favorite for the Commanders' job, Ryan called Johnson’s return “absolutely massive” for the Lions’ chances in 2024, though the Lions seemed better prepared to handle Johnson’s departure than the Falcons were when Shanahan left in 2016.

The Lions have a forward-thinking offensive-minded head coach in Dan Campbell, who called plays in the second half of the 2021 season, while Ryan’s Falcons excelled with a defensive-first head coach in Dan Quinn. The Lions also have several in-house replacements should Johnson eventually leave, including pass game coordinator Tanner Engstrand.

“Jared Goff should be the happiest guy — one of the happiest guys in the NFL right now, to know that going into this offseason, he’s not having to re-learn a system, he’s not having to re-learn a play caller,” Ryan said. “He’s not having to do all of these things that require so much effort and also don’t allow you to pick up where you left off and I think that’s going to be really huge for that offensive team and for the team as a whole, to have Ben back.”

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

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Matt Ryan: Ben Johnson's return 'absolutely massive' for Detroit Lions