Windy City Gridiron
It’s time for some predictions about the new Bears head coach!
As the Bears are having their first practices of the 2025 season, let’s have some fun. For obvious reasons, we’ve been focused on the Bears in 2025 and how many strides they will take. But let’s zoom out and let’s look at Ben Johnson.
Let’s decide just how good Ben Johnson will be when looking at the history of Chicago Bears coaches. The Bears are a unique franchise with George Halas eating up so much of the team’s history that stretches for over 100 years.
But the Bears have had other successes under other coaches. Obviously, there’s 1985, there’s 2006 and there’s a couple others too! How much success will Ben Johnson have?
My answer: Alright, well, let’s look at the Bears franchise. Halas was basically the Bears' head coach from 1920 to 1967, but he wasn’t the head coach exclusively. There were some other coaches in the mix there, but they almost filled in for Halas and had unique situations where they were only there for a short time, or it was during World War II. So while Paddy Driscoll reached a championship game in one of his two seasons, the wartime tandem of Luke Johnsos and Hunk Anderson even won a title, I don’t think you can rank them as all-time great coaches due to their unique situations.
So there’s George Halas, he sits atop the Bears coaching ranks and is near the top of the all-time NFL ranks as well. Second all-time has to be Mike Ditka, who was the captain of the 1985 Bears team that won the Super Bowl and several other teams that had excellent seasons, including a 14-2 campaign, and two other seasons that ended in the NFC Championship game. Third on the list is Lovie Smith, who had several solid seasons and reached one Super Bowl, but couldn’t bring home the championship.
Fourth on the list is probably Matt Nagy. Perhaps Bears fans would argue against that, but it’s irrelevant for this discussion. If Ben Johnson isn’t better than Matt Nagy, we have some serious problems in Chicago.
Let’s be honest, if the expectation is that the Bears have the best offensive play caller they’ve ever had or have had in the modern era, and the best quarterback they’ve ever had, or at least, best they’ve ever had in the modern era, than the expectation has to be that this team will win a Super Bowl.
If you are excited for Ben and Caleb and don’t have Super Bowl expectations, then the bar isn’t high enough. I am a part of that group. I think Ben and Caleb will eventually win at least one Super Bowl. That puts him ahead of Lovie Smith because you have to expect they will have several other winning campaigns as well.
When you look at Ditka, it gets more challenging. Some...
