LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Ben Johnson walked into a Halas Hall media room packed with the usual cast of Bears beat reporters, plus one foreigner from Detroit. This was expected.

Johnson’s return to Detroit, after all, is a big freaking deal.

The Bears head coach was the Lions offensive coordinator the last three seasons and their tight ends coach before that. He was beloved in the Lions locker room, among team staffers and throughout the fan base for his role in turning the Lions’ fortunes upside down.

Johnson certainly deserved a shot to be a head coach but seeing him leave yet remain in the NFC North wasn’t ideal. It didn’t change feelings towards him, but it certainly adds some spice to Johnson’s return to a place he called home for so long and against a longstanding division rival. The first meeting comes Sunday afternoon at Ford Field.

“That was one of the unfortunate parts of making that decision was you were saying goodbye to a lot of friends and a great place,” Johnson said in a Wednesday press conference. “My family, myself, we’ve got a lot of strong relationships there in that community. Hopefully that continues to stay that way as well.

“But we felt like this was the best opportunity for myself and my family and we were really excited about coming to Chicago. At times you have to make tough decisions and that’s really how that went down.” 

His longstanding friendship with Lions head coach Dan Campbell won’t be tested. They’ve worked together a long time, since their days as Dolphins assistants. They keep in touch but obviously don’t talk as much as they used to. It’ll be radio silence this week as their teams meet, both looking for their first win.

“I view him like family, and I think he would tell you the same thing,” Johnson said. “That will never change. We have fond memories of back when I was just a young, snot-nosed computer punk, as he likes to call it, in Miami. We’d both grown up in this profession of coaching; he’d been in it for a long time as a player and we’ve both come a long way.”

Campbell is chiefly responsible for ushering in a period of sustained success. Campbell and Johnson had a good thing going with the Lions, but it was time to continue his career path.

“Ben’s my friend. He’s always going to be my friend,” Campbell said on Sunday, after Detroit’s loss to Green Bay. “Nothing about that’s going to change. We’re going in, getting ready to play Chicago, we’re going to win this game. We have to.”

Despite the emotions that come with Johnson’s return, he’s got to get a win.

“My mind’s going to be about winning the football game, and that’s really what it’s going to come down to is us going out there and looking to find our first victory of the season. So it will be a tough environment,” Johnson said. “That place has really turned into one of the strongest home-field advantage places I think in the National Football League and so we’ll have our work cut out for us. We’ll have to communicate within that hostile environment, and I think we’ll find out a lot about ourselves.”

Expect Johnson to have some special plays dialed up for his former team. The Lions defense knows the Johnson offense as well as anyone.

The Bears will have great insight from Johnson on his former team – there was a Tuesday meeting at Halas Hall about that very thing – but the Lions must account for their creative former coach and friend on the field, which will be the biggest challenge of all.

“You’ll practice one or two things, you do it for every opponent,” Campbell said. “But, I don’t really care about trick plays. If you – let’s just handle the meat and potatoes of an offense, a defense, what we think they’re going to hang their hat on, and let’s stop that first. Let’s worry about that, let’s make sure we’re all on point, and we’ll handle the other stuff with our rules.

“You have to have proper eyes, man, we give you those rules for a reason. And look, they may hit us on one, that’s alright. That happens, you get back in the huddle and let’s go to the next play.”