Graham Glasgow Says Ben Johnson Was Little More 'Uppity'

Glasgow offers assessment of differences between John Morton, Ben Johnson.

Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson. | Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

One of the biggest storylines surrounding the Detroit Lions this offseason has been the change in coordinators.

Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn both took head coaching jobs this offseason, leaving Detroit to replace each of the leaders of the offense and defense.

While Dan Campbell promoted Kelvin Sheppard internally to defensive coordinator, he went external with his offensive coordinator hire with the addition of John Morton.

One of the players who has a front-row seat to the impact of these changes is offensive lineman Graham Glasgow, who may be the team's best option to start at center following the retirement of Frank Ragnow.

Playing the center position comes with plenty of responsibility, including learning all of the vernacular within the playbook to efficiently make calls regarding protections at the line of scrimmage. As a result, he's worked closely with Johnson and is now in lockstep with Morton.

During a recent interview with 97.1 The Ticket's 'Costa and Jansen Show With Heather,' Glasgow had an assessment of the differences between Johnson and Morton. In his experience working with both, Johnson offered more consistent high energy while Morton appears to be more laid back in terms of their approach to commanding the offense.

“I think it’s gone pretty smoothly. They’re completely different, I feel like, in the way they go about things," Glasgow told hosts Jim Costa and Jon Jansen Tuesday. " I think that John is a little more laid back than Ben was. Ben was a little bit more uppity. I wouldn’t say he was — I feel like they have the same amount of energy, but just it seemed like Ben was more high-energy because he was always getting after it. But things seem to be going well, everyone seems to be picking things up pretty good. I’m happy to see where we’re at.” 

Center experience

Ragnow's retirement came as a surprise to Lions fans, and because Glasgow had played the position when the starter was injured he's a natural replacement.

Detroit has given some first-team reps to Tate Ratledge throughout the early part of camp, but Glasgow's experience will be a key factor in ultimately deciding who plays the pivot in Week 1. The Michigan product revealed he feels he's best suited to be there due to the snaps he's logged there in his career.

"I like playing center. Center is, I mean, I played it in college a lot, I've played it in the pros a lot. I'm happy to play center," Glasgow noted. "There's a lot of mental stuff that you need to do there, and I feel like I'm best suited to do that for who we have."

A guard in college, Ratledge has a learning curve ahead of him in finding his groove at the center position. Because of the complexity of the scheme, Glasgow noted that it can take up to a year for a young player to fully learn the intricacies of playing center.

This adjustment period is due to the Lions not shying away from implementing any type of run-blocking scheme, be it zone, gap or trap.

"I think it takes you about a good year to be honest, and there's a lot of stuff that comes with it. If you're just coming into a system like this, we have a lot of plays, we run every type of scheme – gap, outside zone, inside zone, trap, wham, pin and pull, tackle pull — we do everything. I feel like, sometimes, you end up co-mingling things together that you're not supposed to. It's hard to separate things if you're not well-versed in what we're doing. So I think that it takes probably around a year for someone who's a young center coming into this system to be able to differentiate all those, even just the tags, unless someone was helping him out like Jared or someone next to him. I think it's not easy."