According to the Detroit News' Rob Parker, Lions owner William Clay Ford did indeed tell the coaches to get the ball to Calvin Johnson more.
Lions officials Thursday would not confirm or deny that the coaches were asked to get the ball to Johnson, the second overall pick in April's NFL draft, though it was clear he was more involved than he had been in any other game this season.
Let me first say one thing about Rob Parker's credibility. He doesn't have any. Parker has been known for spewing unfounded rumors in the past and 95% of them never turn out to be true. Usually, though, those rumors aren't included in any of his columns or in the Detroit News. Instead, he uses the late-night Sunday night show Sports Final Edition on WDIV to do that. With that in mind, I would say something written in the paper would likely be true, but with Parker you always have to wonder.
As far as the story itself goes, I would not be surprised at all if WCF did tell coaches to get the ball to C.J. With this draft pick being so important to the management and ownership, Johnson has to come through and prove that he was worthy of being selected second overall. Since the Lions have such a great group of receivers already, you can see why Johnson might not get the ball as much as he should. At the same time, though, it also should be noted that the back injury Johnson got against Philadelphia has hung around and has hurt his stats as well. If he had been healthy all year I would think by now he would be getting the ball more.
I really don't have a big problem with WCF telling the coaches to get C.J. the ball if that is the only thing he tells them. Trust me, I want WCF as far away from the coaches as possible, but this doesn't really seem like a big issue to me. I know that the coaches listened considering Johnson got the ball thrown in his direction against Green Bay a lot more than usual, but I hope the "instruction" of what the coaches should do stops there. Anything else could just cause unneeded problems.