Regardless of what happens Monday night, we know one thing is certain: This won’t be last season. There’s not a dark cloud of deniability hanging over Ben Johnson’s head and fate the way it was Matt Eberflus this time last year. Clouds of hope float different than clouds of uncertainty.
Especially when millions of people and the front office who hired you know who you are. The absolute about Ben Johnson right now is that we don’t. But starting Monday night, we will.
Hoping that this is the beginning of a new beginning — a new reign — and not the beginning of a foreseeable end three years from now. When Game 1 of 2028 will be Bears head coach No. 19’s Game 1. To not hold this organization’s post-Lovie football past against Johnson with every step his team doesn’t take forward.
Because, all expectations aside, the one thing that we in this city must “keep in mind at all times” this season when it comes to Ben Johnson is that Ben Johnson is a rookie head coach. Not like the other first-time head coaches the organization has hired in the past, but still a rookie head coach. In the NFL. In arguably the best, most competitive and intense division in the game. Where team colors equate to the color of blood.
Knowing that he’s not Joe Madden or Tom Thibodeau while hoping the turnaround is similar; knowing that his Year 1 won’t be like Luke Richardson’s or Tyler Marsh’s because, with all due respect, his inheritance (thanks to the Bears’ front office) was way better than theirs. Johnson’s reality should be somewhere tempered in the middle. With us and far more seriously within the Bears’ organization. But then again …
(Anything close to what Mike Macdonald did in his rookie season last season in Seattle would put Johnson in the conversation to be among the top five all-time Bears head coaches. That’s how low the bar is right now.)
Not to put any undue or undeserved pressure on Johnson, but he is the one coach in the NFL who can’t have a Game 1 outcome as the overhyped “first time in this situation” head coach Bill Belichick had last week. Emphasis on the overhyped part. Nor can he get away with an “obviously we have a lot of work to do. We need to do a better job all the way around — coaching, playing, all three phases of the game. Just wasn’t up to what it needs to be, and we’re a lot better than that” response.
This is Chicago, these are the Bears, we’ve heard those exact words and seen enough similar Game 1 outcomes over the last two generations to accept that as acceptable. Just pray that Johnson goes into Monday knowing that.
Again, no pressure, but his first game as head coach just happens to be on Monday night, on “MNF,” against the Vikings, the rival, the surprise team of the NFC North last season, winners of 14 games, nine fewer loses than the Bears, the team that before Micah Parsons’ escaped to G.B. was the only team in the division ranked ahead of the Bears in The Athletic’s fan Hope-O-Meter survey, against the NFL coach of the year, because of the way the season ended for them is on a mission that the Bears are literally and imaginatively a few years away from.
Everything is stacked against him. Remember, though hyped as a prospect as he was, as in-demand as he was, as much of a prize as we believe — or have been lead to believe — he is, he is new to this. Not just the job, not just the responsibility, not just the expectations, but also us. Judge, jury, executioners of Bears head coaches.
Albeit, much of the same clemency that seems to be being given to Caleb Williams, mercy that will disappear beginning Monday (trust me), should be afforded Johnson as he goes through the growing pains of, too, learning how to run a whole team at this level while being the shot-caller. Where all of the decisions aren’t necessarily his, but all of the responsibilities for both those decisions and outcomes are.
Starting Monday, this again, has to be different. Even if the result isn’t a “W,” the feel has to not be how the past has made us feel. Defeated. Depressed. The same. The rush to arbitrate has to find its chill on this one. We have to allow Johnson space to problem-solve. That doesn’t mean the criticism on him this year should not be harsh or that he shouldn’t be prepared for it. It just means things can’t be like the last two years where people were coming to the Bears game for the food.
That’s on him. On us? We must ask and answer the question: Do we judge a man against his predecessors or his potential?
Unfortunately for Ben Johnson, the answer is both. He signed a contract for this. Part of the territory. Too many in the past have failed miserably at this. We’ll try to embrace him as No. 18 for as long as we can, he just has to now give us a reason beyond promise. Say hello, Ben Johnson, to the pressure of being the guy anointed to save Chicago football … rookie.