Bengals tried to hire Bears coach Ben Johnson for a unique job after 2020 NFL season

CINCINNATI -- When Zac Taylor was finalizing his coaching staff following the 2020 NFL season, he reached out to Ben Johnson and offered him a job, but here's the twist: Taylor wanted the offensive-minded Johnson to coach on the defensive side of the ball.

That might sound a little bizarre, but there's an explanation behind it. 

Taylor and Johnson entered the NFL together in 2012 when both of them were hired to serve on Joe Philbin's staff with the Miami Dolphins. It was the first NFL coaching job for both guys and they ended up working together for four seasons. Although they went their separate ways following the 2015 season, they almost reunited a few years later in Cincinnati. 

Taylor had just finished his second season coaching the Bengals, and at the time, he was hoping to add Johnson to his staff. Johnson had just finished his second season in Detroit, but his future was up in the air, because the head coach who had hired him (Matt Patricia) had just been fired. 

From 2012 thru 2020, Johnson always coached on the offensive side of the ball, but the Bengals didn't have any openings on that side of the ball, so Taylor offered to bring in Johnson as a quality control coach on the defensive side of the ball. 

"He was out [in Detroit] and we didn't have any openings on offense," Taylor said of Johnson. "After the 2020 season, we hadn't yet hired [quality control] coaches on defense. We did not have an offensive opening so I just wanted to get him on the staff. So we both knew he could come in on defense and help the defense. That was the only opening we had."

NFL Week 14 picks: Our experts face off on Joe Burrow vs. Josh Allen, other crucial matchups

Jordan Dajani

Johnson was an offensive quality control coach for the Lions in 2019 before being promoted to tight ends coach in 2020 with Detroit. In the NFL, asking an offensive minded coach to go to the defensive side of the ball doesn't always work out, but Taylor was confident that Johnson would have been able to easily pull it off. 

"He was just really smart that way where that translates -- in a [quality control] coach sense -- to any side of the ball," Taylor said. "You don't always want to have guys to do that, but Ben could have done it."

If Johnson had been hired, Taylor said that he wouldn't have been a defensive coach for very long. 

"We would have eventually got him over to offense when it made sense," Taylor said. 

In the end, Johnson ended up staying in Detroit and that's because the Lions ended up hiring someone he was familiar with: Dan Campbell. Johnson coached with Cambell from 2012 thru 2015 on the same Dolphins' coaching staff that also included Taylor.

After serving as the tight ends coach in 2020 under Patricia, Johnson stayed on in the same role in 2021 with Campbell. After that, he was promoted to passing game coordinator in 2022, and then he was moved up to offensive coordinator in 2023, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

There's a bizarro world where Johnson takes the Bengals' job and eventually gets moved over to the offensive side of the ball where he helps Taylor design plays for Joe Burrow, but that didn't happen. Instead, we're in a world that's equally bizarre where Johnson has the Bears as the No. 1 overall seed in the NFC heading into Week 14. 

Johnson has the Bears at 9-3, which includes a 47-42 win over Taylor's Bengals in Week 9 that was one of the wildest games of the season in the NFL. Although Taylor and Johnson didn't end up coaching together, Johnson does have a Taylor on his coaching staff: Zac Taylor's brother, Press Taylor, is the passing game coordinator for the Bears.