For The Win
The Chicago Bears are not a trustworthy sports franchise. In fact, they’re one of the least trustworthy teams in American sports.
Since 2011, the year current chairman George McCaskey took over, the Bears have been an unmitigated embarrassment. It would be an understatement to say they’ve been cellar dwellers intent on repeatedly stepping on rakes in pitch darkness. Eight losing seasons. Just two playoff berths. Five different coaches. Four different general managers. Seemingly countless draft swings and misses in a manner that demoralizes everyone with even a tangential connection to the Bears.
Yet, when it came to hiring mad scientist Ben Johnson as the Bears’ head coach — one of the best NFL head coaching candidates in recent memory — none of this mattered.
None of it.
Johnson, an adaptive genius who could likely get a job anywhere he wanted, chose the Bears — a team that has perfected the art of self-inflicted chaos. Huh?
It’s all thanks to Caleb Williams, a quarterback Johnson couldn’t resist attaching himself to for the foreseeable future. An uber-talented player who made joining one of the NFL’s premier laughingstocks so enticing in itself. A poised leader whose locker Johnson literally had his kids pose in front of for a photo during his initial tour at Bears headquarters.
Moments like this say it all:
Ben Johnson taking a picture of his kids in front of Caleb Williams’ locker pic.twitter.com/PQz9AGrFhX
— BOOG (@BoogCB) January 21, 2025
It’s cliché and rote, but it’s true.
There’s no guarantee Johnson will work out in Chicago as intended. Projecting how an NFL head coach will fare in their new gig often proves as silly as forecasting myriad Super Bowls and MVPs for any old first-round draft prospect. Sometimes, it seems more impossible to predict because you don’t know how someone will respond with more responsibility on their plate. Sometimes, people crash and burn under such a microscope and immense pressure.
That’s just business.
As a coordinator, Johnson spent the last three years helping turn the Detroit Lions into a juggernaut. He designed an explosive offense (one that was third in expected points added (EPA) since 2022) around Jared Goff, masking his limitations like no one else. He called all the plays, too, finding a unique rhythm that drew rightful comparisons to fellow visionaries like Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan.
David Montgomery with the shovel pass to St. Brown for a gain of 20
| FOX pic.twitter.com/3nIXUDF5fX
— Detroit Lions (@Lions) January 19, 2025
But in the end, Johnson was never accountable for the entire Detroit team.
He was allowed to stay in his offensive bubble, mixing up wild concoctions in lab experiments as he pleased. That will assuredly not apply to the Bears, even if he gives someone else the full-time keys to the defense. Johnson will have to be a leader and commanding presence for everyone in the organization like he hasn’t before. Johnson is as much a scheme hire as a culture...
