NFC Notes: Jared Goff, Ben Johnson, Bears, Lions, Packers

Bears

Bears HC Ben Johnson reflected on his college career at North Carolina when he would give diagrams of plays to his coaches. 

“Soon after I got into college, I started getting the comments from the coordinators, ‘Man, you’re going to be a great coach one day,’” Johnson said, via Kevin Fishbain of The Athletic. “That’s a compliment, but it’s also a backhanded compliment because it means you’re not a very good player. I knew exactly where my future was going.”

Johnson said former North Carolina OC John Shoop was a big influence on him. 

“It was completely different than anything I had experienced before,” Johnson said. “That was really the first time I felt there was a direction for me to go as well.”

Johnson mentioned Shoop had an expression about “talking fast” so they could play fast. He thinks the coach did well to process a lot of information to the players. 

“It’s a little bit of a dynamic personality where you’re talking fast,” Johnson said. “It’s a lot of information, but he was able to make it streamlined in such a way that you could digest it all and apply it on the practice field. I always thought that was very unique.”

Lions

Lions GM Brad Holmes says that he has always had more confidence in QB Jared Goff than most of the outside critics did, especially when he traded QB Matthew Stafford to the Rams in exchange for Goff. 

“I’ve always said, I had more optimism than probably the outside world did, just because I knew him so intimately well,” Holmes said of Goff, via Pro Football Talk. “All the work that we did with him coming out in the draft and all the early success, I was right there with that early success, and I always said when I was with the Rams, when we lost that Super Bowl, people were ready to really just write them off. And I was like, look, he’s so young and he still has so much left in them that, I had a lot of optimism that he was going to continue to develop and continue to mature and continue to get better. Again, you don’t have a crystal ball. You never know how far it’s going to go, but I’m so very happy for him because he’s put all the work in.”

“When we did the big trade, the Goff-Stafford trade, I had a pretty good idea that they were gonna do some big things with Stafford at the helm,” Holmes added. “It hurt a little bit, but those guys are great, Les and Sean and Kevin, those guys, they did reach out and told me how much they appreciated what my efforts were in that whole thing, but they got the job done.”

Packers

Packers first-round OL Jordan Morgan spent most of his rookie season at right guard despite his desire to play left tackle in the NFL like he did in college. Green Bay HC Matt LaFleur said they feel comfortable with Morgan at left tackle and revealed he will compete with Rasheed Walker for the starting spot.

“It’s going to be a great competition,” LaFleur said, via Matt Schneidman of The Athletic. “Him and ‘Sheed are going to battle it out and hopefully push each other to be that much better.”

“It’s something we feel like he can do. Otherwise, we wouldn’t do it, so we’ll let them battle it out and see where it goes.”