{"id":690774,"date":"2026-01-20T08:50:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T08:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/690774\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T08:50:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T08:50:17","slug":"lions-to-hire-drew-petzing-as-oc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/690774\/","title":{"rendered":"Lions To Hire Drew Petzing As OC"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lions have landed on their preferred candidate for the offensive coordinator position.\u00a0Drew Petzing\u00a0is heading to Detroit, as first reported by ESPN\u2019s Adam Schefter<\/a>. \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The sides are working to finalize an agreement in this case, per Schefter. Once that takes place, the Lions will have their\u00a0John Morton replacement set for 2026. Morton was dismissed after one season in the OC role.<\/p>\n

This hire is likely to see Petzing handle play-calling duties, Schefter\u2019s colleague Jeremy Fowler confirms<\/a>. Head coach\u00a0Dan Campbell took over in that capacity midway through the 2025 campaign. As Fowler notes, though, it was expected throughout Detroit\u2019s search process that Campbell would hand those responsibilities to the new offensive coordinator. Petzing called plays during his three years with the Cardinals.<\/p>\n

When Arizona hired\u00a0Jonathan Gannon as head coach, Petzing was among the members of his initial staff. Both remained in place with the Cardinals through the end of the 2025 campaign. Gannon was fired shortly after the end of the regular season, however. Petzing and other staffers have since been expected to depart during the hiring cycle. He and Campbell have never worked together, but as ESPN\u2019s Field Yates notes<\/a>, Petzing is very close with Bears head coach (and former Lions OC) Ben Johnson.<\/p>\n

Campbell will hope that level of familiarity \u2013 in a sense \u2013 will help bring about a return to Johnson-era production on offense. Detroit did not fall particularly short in that respect in 2025, ranking fifth in points and yards per game. Still, struggles in the run game in particular were an issue this past season. Improving on that front will be a key priority for Petzing\u2019s unit.<\/p>\n

The 38-year-old led Arizona to rankings of 19th and 24th in total and scoring offense, respectively, during his first season in place. Petzing\u2019s best year came in 2024, when the Cardinals just missed out on a top-10 finish in each of those areas. Strong production on the ground was a key feature of Arizona\u2019s offense during the first two season of Petzing\u2019s tenure. That helped land him a head coaching interview during last year\u2019s hiring cycle. Dealing with numerous injuries, the Cards regressed on offense in 2025.<\/p>\n

Arizona\u2019s HC position is still open at this time. The team\u2019s offensive coordinator spot will now doubt remain vacant until Gannon\u2019s replacement is in place. Petzing, meanwhile, will take charge of a Lions offense still featuring many of the elements it had during Johnson\u2019s highly effective tenure. If things go according to plan in 2026, Petzing could once again find himself on the head coaching radar during next year\u2019s cycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lions have landed on their preferred candidate for the offensive coordinator position.\u00a0Drew Petzing\u00a0is heading to Detroit, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,2506,24101,7,147,8730,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-690774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-detroit","9":"tag-detroit-lions","10":"tag-detroitlions","11":"tag-drew-petzing","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-lions","14":"tag-newsstand","15":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115926574346481608","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}