BREAKING NEWS: After Understanding the Lions’ distinct and entertaining……

Nick Baumgardner of The Athletic publishes some of the most remarkable video essays on the Detroit Lions, so you should absolutely check out his most recent one, which went live early Saturday morning: “How Ben Johnson crafted a Lions run game that’s diverse, unique and a whole lot of fun.”

Everyone knows Ben Johnson is one of the top offensive coordinators in the NFL today, and the Lions have a rooted identity in the run game, but if you want to go under the hood to discover what makes that run game go, Baumgardner explains it simply and in great detail.

He is the co-host (together with Chris Burke and Colton Pouncy of The Athletic) of the Lions-focused podcast One of These Years, and he lends extensive Lions expertise to his football analysis. The benefit to the rest of us Lions fans is that Baumgardner now has one of the best sets of eyes on NFL tape when it comes to looking at the Lions because he has both tactical football knowledge and actually knows something about the roster (unlike some national folks who may only know or focus on stars). Baumgardner’s piece highlights David Montgomery as a significant upgrade as running back, but it meticulously builds the argument that the Lions’ run game is what it is today because of the offensive line.

In short, we have a situation where the Lions offense is able to run both zone and gap-blocked plays equally well because their athletic linemen are so good across the board and defenses are stuck trying to guess what they are going to be hit with next. You have athletic pullers like Ragnow and Sewell plus tons of power from those guys, Vaitai, Jackson, etc.

A paragraph that captures the general idea is this:

Not unlike San Francisco or Philadelphia, Detroit’s front can handle just about anybody inside the tackle box while also maintaining the collective athleticism to just destroy people in space. It’s not uncommon for Detroit to root half its game plan around a particular counter run designed to attack the interior, and the other half around an outside zone or sweep series.

Defensively, you’re on alert for literally every type of run in the book — on first, second and third down.

Add to that a whole ton of motion and shifts to make any given concept tough to read tendency-wise and then play-action passes built off the same looks and run action; Ben Johnson simply presents an incredibly tough and complicated scheme for opposing defenses to prepare for.