We’re getting very close to the NFL’s Black Monday. Detroit Lions fans may remember this day. It’s the Monday after the regular season concludes and teams fire head coaches and aside from the playoffs, the head coaching search is the biggest story in football. 

Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson is the hottest head coaching candidate in the league right now, but he may also be the smartest since he doesn’t plan to just leave and take any job out there that’s willing to hire him. Teams want this guy badly and it’s no longer a thing where Johnson has to sell himself, teams have to sell themselves to him now. 

Since he can write his own ticket, he’s naturally being very selective about where he might go and there’s talk of what he’s looking for in a team. Here’s what we know Johnson wants to be a head coach of a new team. 

• Organizational alignment between the coaches, GM, and owner
• A good owner
• Freedom within the organization
• Recognition from the organization on what went wrong previously and their willingness to fix it.
• Patience  

When you look at some of the teams that we know are looking for a coach right now, none of the teams fit a lot of those bills. The Bears are a team he’s reportedly intrigued by, but they’re also a team that has woefully struggled to find that alignment for a long time and they haven’t been patient about anything. 

While I’ve been locked into the idea that Johnson isn’t leaving, I spent some of the Christmas break thinking about what teams I think he actually would leave for. Here’s what I came up with. 

Bengals

Very simple no-brainer here. Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, and Tee Higgins. You get this team a run game and they are the most unstoppable offense in the league. Burrow is already a top quarterback, but Johnson could make him better and that’s scary. 

The thing that holds this all back is that the Bengals might not look at any of the recent struggles as Zac Taylor’s fault. The team has dealt with injuries and bad luck in the last two years. They’re also a notoriously patient and loyal team. That’s actually one of the huge reasons Johnson would go there. This team has had two head coaches since 2003.

Bills

Josh Allen is so much like Matthew Stafford to me. Just has unlimited talent, yet you still feel like if someone could harness it in the right way, he’d be a thousand times better. That is also incredibly scary because he’s already extremely good. Imagine what Johnson could do with a guy who can throw from anywhere and be mobile. The Bills are a good team and they’re headed to the playoffs, but they might also be in a spot where Buffalo is tired of waiting and if head coach Sean McDermott can’t get it done in year seven, then he might not ever get it done. 

There’s patience and then there’s waiting too long. This feels like the latter. This is a good place for Johnson because they can be patient, they have the weapons and they have a good owner. 

Giants

Maybe this one is a long shot. Here is the thinking. I look at all the teams that could be looking for new head coaches this year and I see the Giants as the one team in that bunch that would probably be open to admitting what they did wrong. They also might be a team that could fire their GM and hire Lions’ assistant GM Ray Agnew. 

If Johnson and Agnew could take over a team together, well then you have incredibly strong organizational alignment there. Plus this team has a solid young roster with Malik Nabers, Kayvon Thibodeaux, and Brian Burns. They currently hold the first pick in the draft and could find their quarterback of the future with that pick. We know what Johnson can do with quarterbacks because we saw him help Jared Goff rebuild his career. What can he do with a guy from the ground up? 

The concern here is patience. Is John Mara going to let Johnson’s vision unfold? This team has had six different head coaches in the last 10 years. Plus we don’t know if the Giants even plan to tear it down again at this point. Brian Daboll was just the Coach of the Year two seasons ago. Maybe they should wait.