PALM BEACH, Fla. – All NFL head coaches, most of them anyway, take a group photo here at the NFL annual meetings. It looks like a fourth-grade class photo or one of a way-too-serious youth soccer team, a super formal pose to suggest these guys mean business.

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Focus on the first row. You’ll see two newcomers on the far left.

Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn are sporting the same wry smile, clearly comfortable with the guy they’re sitting with.

They should be. Johnson and Glenn were opposing coordinators in Detroit the past three seasons, waging practice battles worthy of their intense competitive nature.

They helped form the Lions into a juggernaut, which naturally led to prime head-coaching candidacy. Glenn ended up with the New York Jets. Johnson was hired by the Bears.

Their bond remains, even after affiliations have changed. It was forged by competitive fire.

That was clear hearing Glenn talking about Johnson on Monday morning at the AFC coaches’ breakfast, as he recalled those daily battles with Johnson.

“Elite coaches thrive on competition, just like elite players do,” Glenn said. “Every day there was a competition between me and Ben on who was going to win. Neither one of us backed down from that. I think that makes you a better team when you can go about your business that way. Every day, you compete. Every day, there’s a winner and a loser. If you do lose, you come back the next day and you try to win.”

That daily experience made both coaches better. They were able to make top-tier talent collections productive as heck, which led to a whole lot of wins and interest from other teams.

They were lined up to interview both Johnson and Glenn when allowed, during the Lions’ bye to start the NFC playoffs. Johnson and Glenn were up for different gigs during that time, but compared notes on how things were going.

“We did talk afterwards, but that was just part of the process,” Glenn said. “We had the bye week at that time and had a chance to interview with those teams that wanted to (talk) to us, and we wanted to handle our business the right way.

“We had some conversations between us about how the interviews were. Other than that, we knew it was part of the business.”

Johnson and Glenn were hunkered down in a quiet part of the Lions training facility, in offices close to each other, for prolonged virtual meetings with prospective employers. Both guys were so coveted they had options, and were therefore interviewing teams while being interviewed.

“We really just bunkered down and knocked everything out over the course of two days with the intent that once those interviews were knocked out, now we can focus on the next opponent,” Johnson said during his introductory press conference in January. “That process was great in terms of everything that was said over those two days, wrote down, feedback, thoughts, post-interview thoughts, and was able to reference those once the game ended and we knew that our season was officially over.”

Then came the hiring phase. Johnson’s went fast, shortly after the Lions unexpectedly bowed out of the playoffs. Glenn’s took a few days longer, though him getting a gig was a virtual certainty.

Both guys are highly respected throughout the league, and both are expected to make a successful transition to the head-coaching ranks. Johnson and Glenn certainly expect that of each others.

“I think I told you guys this last year, he is beyond qualified right now,” Johnson said on Jan. 16, when both guys were Lions coordinators and before either man had been hired as a head coach. “You hear all of our players singing his praises right now, and that’s exactly what I would do. I would second that. He is more prepared to be a head coach than maybe anybody I’ve ever met. He wants that, and I think he’d do a phenomenal job in charge.”

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