On Thursday afternoon, the Detroit Lions’ new offensive coordinator, Drew Petzing, spoke with Pride of Detroit in a 30-minute interview.
Obviously, a huge topic was what kind of offense he would bring to Detroit. The Lions have already insisted that this will be his offense: not Dan Campbell’s, not Ben Johnson’s, his. But what exactly is that going to look like? Petzing wasn’t going to give full details on what the Lions plan on doing—he specifically said he wasn’t going to get too specific until the tape is already out there—but one constant throughout the entire interview was Petzing’s insistence on molding the offense to the talent he has.
“The key to any offense is, it’s got to be built around the players you have,” Petzing said. “You’ve got to highlight their ability and what they do best. So that’s going to be different game-to-game based on who is available. Every roster I’ve been on, it’s going to be a little different.”
Most coaches are going to say something similar to that when talking about rebuilding their offense. But Petzing also offered two examples of needing to shift his offensive identity based on his personnel.
The first example came in 2023, his first year as the Arizona Cardinals’ offensive coordinator. He went into training camp thinking the team would excel at more outside zone runs. But as he learned more about his team, his strategy shifted.
“I thought we were going to be a wide-zone team in Arizona, and a lot of that first offseason, it was emphasizing wide zone and certain techniques that go with that: running off the ball, displacement, we just can’t allow penetration—those types of things,” Petzing explained. “And as we got going, I just didn’t feel like we were good enough at it to make it our foundation.
“To me, any good coach, I have to adapt to who we have and what we’re good at. In Arizona, it was emphasizing James Conner and emphasizing the guys we had on the line and what I felt like they did well.”
The second example came in 2025, his least successful season with the Cardinals. Things fell apart early in the season when Arizona’s roster was ravaged by injuries, including Conner missing 14 games, Kyler Murray missing 12 games, and four starting offensive linemen missing at least five games. While the team previously held a strong rushing identity, in the wake of the injuries, Petzing shifted to a heavy-leaning passing attack, ending with the team finishing with more passing attempts than any other team in the NFL.
“In that process—like anything you do—you learn a lot about yourself, you learn about the game,” Petzing said of the tough 2025 season. “We changed dramatically, philosophy-wise, in terms of what we felt we needed to do to be successful based on who we had available on gameday.
“I think as a play-caller, as a coordinator, as a coach—not that you want to be a part of a lot of those—but there’s a lot of learning to be done when you’re forced with a task like, ‘Hey, what we did no longer fits who we have. And it’s Week 6, and we’ve got to figure out a way to score points and try to stay competitive.’ And we did. We had to pivot and obviously became a little more pass-oriented, because of who we had and who we needed to highlight.”
When it comes to what he’ll do in Detroit, he obviously doesn’t want to stray too far away from the things that were working and things that quarterback Jared Goff likes, but he also promised there are plenty of ideas he’ll be bringing to the table, too.
“We’re not going to completely depart from anything that they’ve done very well. There’s things that I want to introduce that I think we’re going to do well,” Petzing said.
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