The Detroit Lions season is over, which means the club's star coordinators are now on the clock for head coaching positions.
Offensive coordinator Ben Johnson has interviewed with Chicago and Jacksonville with another one planned with Las Vegas, while defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn has spoken with, or plans to speak to, every NFL team with an opening except for Dallas to this point.
Either way, Johnson and Glenn's starts are bright enough that that Dan Campbell and the Lions brass, 27-7 with two NFC North championships and no Super Bowl appearances to show for it, must make serious plans about how to continue and improve upon their current run without their two highly-respected coordinators.
According to ESPN's Adam Schefter, the Lions have identified three in-house candidates to possibly take over their respective sides of the ball.
Candidates expected to receive consideration to replace Lions OC Ben Johnson and DC Aaron Glenn include:
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 20, 2025
🏈Lions assistant head coach/running backs coach Scottie Montgomery
🏈Lions passing game coordinator Tanner Engstrand.
🏈Lions linebackers coach Kelvin Sheppard…
Montgomery has been with the club since 2023, coming over after two seasons as the Indianapolis Colts' running backs coach. A former Panthers, Broncos and Raiders wide receiver, Montgomery had spent the majority of his career at the college level. He was the associate head coach and offensive coordinator for David Cutcliffe's Duke teams that reached the ACC Championship and won at least eight games annually from 2013-15, which netted him the East Carolina head coaching job in 2016. After a 9-26 run there, Montgomery spent 2019-20 as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Maryland.
Engstrand has been on FootballScoop's radar for nearly a decade, when he was part of a San Diego staff in 2016 that became the first team from the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League to win a game in the FCS playoffs. The following year, he was a finalist for the FootballScoop FCS Coordinator of the Year.
Engstrand left San Diego after 2017 to re-join Jim Harbaugh at Michigan as an offensive analyst (Engstrand was a GA on Harbaugh's USD staffs from 2004-06), and was then the offensive coordinator and running backs coach for the XFL's DC Defenders in its short-lived 2020 season.
He joined for the fall of 2020 as an offensive assistant, then remained on when Campbell took over as 2021. Campbell promoted him to tight ends coach and passing game coordinator in 2022, and since 2023 he's been solely the Lions' pass game coordinator.
On defense, Sheppard played for a variety of NFL teams from 2011-18, crossing paths with Campbell on the Miami Dolphins from 2014-15. A national champion at LSU in 2007, Sheppard spent 2020 as his alma mater's director of player development before joining Campbell's inaugural Lions staff as outside linebackers coach. He's coached the club's inside linebackers for the past three seasons.