Detroit Lions coordinators Aaron Glenn and Ben Johnson are expected to interview for several head coach vacancies later this week.
The Detroit Lions don’t know who their second-round opponent will be in the NFL Playoffs quite yet—they’ll play the winner of Monday night’s Eagles vs. Buccaneers game—but most of the week will be spent scouting them and developing a gameplan for them. Unfortunately for Detroit, both offensive coordinator Ben Johnson and defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn will be stepping away from those duties temporarily to interview for head coaching jobs this week.
“It’ll have to be Friday and a little bit of Saturday,” coach Dan Campbell said. So, Friday afternoon after practice is done, they’re going to have to crunch them in there. They’re already working on scheduling it. And then Saturday, there’ll be a small window in there after practice, before night meetings and that’s it.”
NFL policy prevents teams from interviewing coaches on teams in the playoffs until three days after their Wild Card game. After that, teams can start do virtual interviews—so the coordinators won’t be leaving the building. If the team is still in the playoffs beyond that, in-person interviews must be on hold until after the divisional round.
This obviously presents a bit a distraction for Johnson and Glenn, who have a combined nine known head coach interview requests (see our tracker for specifics ). Either could turn down an interview request, but there is a significant risk waiting until after the Lions’ playoff run is over, seeing as teams are trying to finish their searches in a timely manner.
At this point, we don’t know which interview requests Johnson will accept, but Glenn indicated last week he plans on going forward with all of his requests.
“Will I take them all? I mean, yeah,” Glenn said.
It’s not an ideal situation for Detroit, but Campbell believes both will be fully prepared for Sunday afternoon’s playoff game.
“That puts a stress on them, on us,” Campbell said. “But they’ll do the best they can with it, make the most of it, which they should. But they’ll be prepared for us to get ready the next game.”