‘Like a hovercraft’: Lane Johnson’s mastery on film as analyzed by Eagles O-line coach Jeff Stoutland

Stand up and put your computer down. Let me show you something.

Jeff Stoutland was done talking about what makes Lane Johnson arguably the best tackle in football. He needed to use his hands to further explain his point. It is how the Eagles assistant coach often teaches his craft and why he has molded so many offensive linemen into NFL players.

Stoutland, shown an example on film of Johnson taking a vertical set, was asked why it seems as if opposing edge rushers, pass after pass, are like magnets drawn into the hands of the right tackle.

“Stand here and get your hands up like you’re blocking me,” Stoutland said recently, grabbing a reporter by the arms. “So drop your right foot back and use it as a brace foot. Now push on me. See that right there? Now turn your left toe to the sideline. … Do you feel the difference?”

The difference, just by rotating the foot some degrees to the right, was like standing firm vs. toppling over.

“It’s like [Jon] Dorenbos doing a magic trick,” Stoutland continued, referencing the former Eagles long snapper-turned-entertainer. “When you’re in high school or you’re in college, the coach usually says, ‘You’ve got to keep your shoulders square. Don’t turn your shoulders.’ Well, how the … do I do that?

“It’s all right there. It’s your inside foot.”

Johnson’s effectiveness, or that of any O-lineman, is more complicated than that, of course. But the brilliance of Stoutland is that he can take what is complex — even to his students — and simplify it so it is understood. His best players, similarly, make blocking look effortless.

Johnson has freakish athleticism for his position. He has tremendous size. He has great aptitude. And he works diligently on his craft. But it’s the near perfection of his technique, and its repetition, that allows Stoutland to encapsulate the virtuosity of Johnson’s vertical sets into the mere placement of his left foot.

“On top of the fact that he’s so talented and so quick, he uses the technique that he’s been taught, and it’s all over the film,” Stoutland said. “Not only is he physically freakish, he’s technically sound. Together with those two things, I don’t know who’s better.”

The pass protection numbers, at least, support Stoutland’s claim. Johnson hasn’t allowed a sack since 2020, according to Pro Football Focus. He’s the only starting tackle to pitch as many shutouts over that span. And despite a nagging ankle injury from 2018-20, Johnson has allowed only two sacks in his last 50 games, including the postseason.

The last sack came in his final game of the 2020 season, when his left ankle was reinjured and he had to get a second “tightrope” surgery.

“Olivier Vernon,” Johnson said, naming the former Browns defensive end who beat him.

As for the last sack he allowed while relatively healthy, it came in Week 7 of the 2019 season vs. Cowboys defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence.

“I remember exactly what it was,” Johnson said. “He got me at the top of the rush with the corner and made a hell of a play.”

Johnson is slated to meet Lawrence, not to mention Micah Parsons, possibly the best edge rusher in the NFL, when the Eagles host Dallas on Sunday night. Another clean sheet, and one on national television, could further help him earn the respect he believes has eluded him.

Johnson went to the Pro Bowl from 2017-19. He was left off in 2020 after playing only seven games, but he was snubbed in 2021 despite getting named second-team All-Pro. He missed three games last season to address his mental health, but since returning, he has allowed only one quarterback hit.

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And yet, Johnson’s name also was missing from NFL Network’s most recent top 100 list which was voted on by players. O-linemen were disproportionately unrepresented in what essentially is a popularity contest. But the 32-year-old knows players also form the largest bloc in Pro Bowl voting.

“I get mad when I see people in the Pro Bowl getting accolades when I’m the better player,” Johnson said this week. “Just because I’m in the back stage of my career where I know I don’t have that many years left.

“But I think I get more annoyed by the PFF [bull].”

Pro Football Focus, which bases much of its grading formula on analytics, doesn’t, according to Johnson, factor time to throw or how often tackles protect alone into its equations. Stoutland was mystified when told that PFF’s run-blocking grades for his right tackle were tame compared to his pass-protection ones.

“I talk to players on other teams and they’re like, ‘This guy is unbelievable,’” Stoutland said. “I don’t know what the other side thinks; I can’t understand it. But I know the people who play against him and the people who are around him understand how special the guy really is.”

The Eagles certainly do. When Johnson has been in the lineup during his 10 seasons, the team is 64-42-1 (.603 percentage), and when he is not they are 12-20 (.375). Even the great Jason Peters’ presence didn’t affect the win-loss disparity as much. In fact, the Eagles won a Super Bowl without him.

That may say more about replacement Halapoulivaati Vaitai and Stoutland’s ability to get him ready than anything related to Peters. The Eagles still speak in hushed tones about the future Hall of Famer, who signed with the Cowboys at age 40 last month but is questionable to play Sunday because of injury.

But Johnson is now on that same level, according to Stoutland. They have their differences, and a few similarities Johnson said he took from Peters, but how the former bookends are most alike is in their decoding of the coach’s information. All of his great ones have spoken the same language.

“Lane doesn’t like all this [explanation]. He can’t deal with it all. He goes, ‘Just tell me what you want me to do.’ Simplify it. Boom. Here it is,” Stoutland said. “Like Nick Foles. He was the same. And now they just do it over and over. JP did it so many … times. Ten thousand times he did it. Every single time you watched him [vertical] set, it was the same set.

“They look at me like, ‘I got you.’ Football IQ. They understand, they conceptualize, they can visualize what you’re saying to them when you’re saying it.”

And then Stoutland may have stepped in and grabbed them to show the angles. But he mostly reserves his hands-on training for those most in need. The coach helped break down film of Johnson, as did the right tackle himself, to offer more insight into his expertise.

Johnson was fortunate to have Peters to emulate when he entered the NFL in 2013. While the former is more linear and agile, and the latter larger and more powerful, they share a quickness of foot.

“What I noticed about him, you look at all of his film over the years, he was the first guy off the ball, every time,” Johnson said of Peters. “He knows to get to that point and then he’s just an athlete.”

It took time, but Johnson (No. 65) now routinely is the first at the snap. Left tackle Jordan Mailata (No. 68) isn’t far behind.

“A lot of this, Lane just saw Jason,” Stoutland said. “His foot would be down the field like this in about two mule kicks. You see how square he is? Go back and watch the inside foot. Watch his left foot.”

Stoutland has a term for when the inside foot isn’t square to the shoulder, but he won’t allow its usage here.

“It’s bad, bad,” he said.

The 6-foot-6, 325-pound Johnson doesn’t have a frame as wide as most tackles. He has worked hard to maintain his weight and build muscle. Early in his career, he made mistakes with performance-enhancing substances, and served two suspensions.

But he has since become a fitness and nutrition expert and has hosted offseason strength training programs for players at his “Bro Barn” in Moorestown. The payoff comes when freight trains, such as Vikings defensive end Danielle Hunter (No. 99), are trying to bull rush you.

“When you see him move his feet, they’re like a hovercraft,” Stoutland said. “They’re so close to the ground. … Lane’s feet are almost dragging on the grass, like the grass tips are flying up. He’s like [makes a lawn mower sound]. He economizes all his time.”

Johnson said he could have gotten his hands inside Hunter more to fend off his final push.

“I absorbed it. At the right time, I held off,” he said. “It feels like I’m in the rodeo. I got a bull and here we go, five seconds at a time.”

Stoutland wants consistent vertical sets on five-to-seven-step quarterback drops. He often talks about the “common denominators” that all O-linemen need to perform in the NFL, but says the best apply their “critical factors” — what makes them special — to the trade.

Johnson has physical critical factors — agility and speed — but also cerebral ones.

“If you ever play tackle … the first thing you would be thinking if you’re protecting is you feel that guy on your edge, right?” Stoutland said. “So you turn and when you turn, you give up a ‘short edge.’ And your quarterback is feeling that [stuff].

“What Lane is a master at — a master at — is understanding angles.”

Jaguars rookie Travon Walker may have been the top pick in the draft, but he ran into a wall in Week 4.

“I was watching him all week bull rush people to the quarterback by walking them back,” Johnson said. “He’s just a big body. Super long arms. … I’m just trying to be quick out of my stance, and then it’s just really a hand fight.”

Howard Mudd was a proponent of the jump set. Peters became its virtuoso under the former Eagles offensive line coach’s instruction. Stoutland will allow it, but mostly as a change of pace.

“If you’re going to use this set line, you better tell the guy next to you,” Stoutland said. “If you do that on your own and, say, [left guard Isaac Seumalo] is here, and Isaac sets back, and you’re up here, then you have a ‘vertical void.’

“I can pass off games when we’re relatively close to each other and on the same level. Once we get like this and this, these are vertical voids. You are susceptible to twist-stunts and line stunts. But when you’re stabbing, it’s all bets are off. You’re going. You’re all in.”

Johnson picked the right time to jump-set Hunter.

“What you can do is change up your set lines,” Johnson said. “Sometimes you go attack them, like Howard Mudd used to teach guys. It’s a different style of play. I think I just caught him off guard on this one.”

But tackles have to be cognizant of their relationship to the guard next to them. The O-line is often described as a chain-link fence. Johnson can drop as far as he wants to cut off the edge because of his superior athleticism and technique, but if he creates too much space between himself and Seumalo (No. 56), they leave themselves open to twists and stunts.

“If he goes out there like this, like a lot of guys do, now I’m far from you, Isaac, how am I going to pass a game off when they created that kind of space?” Stoutland said. “I call it, ‘cyberspace.’ … That’s bad.”

Running the ball often is about creating running lanes by way of triangular zone blocking. The Eagles’ interior O-linemen are among the best with zone concepts and getting to the second level to create those gaps.

While Johnson is among the best pass protectors in the game, he said he favors run blocking.

“Going into a game I love when it’s going [to favor] the run game because you got a simple assignment,” Johnson said. “Pass game is a little more jumping out of an airplane.”

But run blocking is like tandem skydiving and can be just as dangerous if one parachute doesn’t work.

“See, the [running back] over here? That’s a bad deal,” Stoutland said. “We’re trying to run a zone play out to the right and the [defensive end] goes up and under him and Lane’s by himself. Isaac’s not working with him. He’s by himself.

“That’s like saying, ‘Hey, I want you to go to a gunfight with rocks.’”

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But get Johnson on the move on a mid or outside zone run and he’s as good as any tackle.

“You want to be aggressive, but if you’re overaggressive, he’ll go underneath you,” Johnson said. “Really, just a couple of shuffle steps, try to stay square, like they’re trying to make the turn. And once you get engaged, just know that he’s going to look for the running back initially and you’re going to have to take a second bite.”

Said Stoutland: “That’s displacement. Look at the shoulders and the angle he has. … Everything we teach is about angles. Run game, power angles. That’s a power angle.”

And with that, here endeth the lesson.

“You’re like a line coach now,” Stoutland joked to the reporter. “You can go coach the line somewhere. This is what it’s all about. And once the player can understand, then they can take off.”

Johnson soars among the best.