After a rather disappointing 2025 season, the Detroit Lions will officially have a new offensive coordinator on the sidelines next season. On Tuesday, Dianna Russini of The Athletic reported that the Lions are parting ways with John Morton.
Morton returned to the Motor City in 2025 to be Ben Johnson’s replacement after spending the 2023 and 2024 seasons with the Denver Broncos as their passing game coordinator. On paper, the idea of bringing back Morton to the franchise to call plays seemed like a good idea due to the familiarity with Dan Campbell.
However, things went quickly south for Morton as the Lions’ offense could never find a groove, and eventually, Dan Campbell took the playcalling duties in Week 10, which didn’t work out in the grand scheme of things.
Now Campbell will be on the search for his next offensive coordinator. If you’re a Lions fan, you might want the team to go outside of the organization or someone with no ties to Detroit to take the OC job.
But if you’re Campbell, you might want to seriously consider run game coordinator/offensive line coach Hank Fraley for the OC job.
Lions Can’t Overlook Hank Fraley for Vacant Offensive Coordinator Job
After seeing how the Morton experience went, Fraley likely won’t spark a ton of buzz among the fanbase, especially with the running game and offensive line taking a step back, too.
That said, Fraley has been with the Lions for eight years and could make the case that he’s due for another promotion after being in the run game coordinator role for this season.
This time last year, Fraley interviewed twice for the Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator role, which he didn’t get, as the Seahawks ultimately hired Klint Kubiak. Despite the Seahawks being his only interview, it showed that Fraley could get interest elsewhere across the league. And the same thing could happen this offseason.
There are a few candidates (John Harbaugh, Kevin Stefanski, Kliff Kingsbury) looking for head coaching opportunities.
If Harbaugh or Stefanski were to get hired somewhere, who is to say that they wouldn’t bring in Fraley for an interview to pick his brain on the Lions’ running game and offense?
We know for a fact that Harbaugh and Stefanski love to run the football, and who better to bring onto their staff than Fraley?
Granted, the Lions' running game wasn't clicking on all cylinders this season, as they only averaged 120.1 yards per game. However, we saw the Lions' running game suffer due to the injuries on the offensive line, which is out of Fraley's control.
That being said, if you’re the Lions and you truly value what Fraley brings to the table, you cannot and must not dismiss him for the vacant OC job.