For all the flashes and flourishes the Bears signed up for when they hired Ben Johnson as their head coach, it’s his common sense that has stood out most in what is turning out to be a marvelous first season.
He has benefitted from occasional good fortune, no doubt, but the best thing about Johnson this season is he always seems to have a sound answer amid an endless barrage of questions. The Bears are smarter since bringing him in, and he showed all the qualities they’ve been missing from their head coaches lately in their 31-28 victory Sunday against the Steelers.
He kept running the ball, even when it wasn’t working, and it eventually opened up.
He kept scheming players open with his calls, giving quarterback Caleb Williams ample opportunities to come through and leaving him enough margin for an imperfect performance to be sufficient.
He kept coming up with good ideas on third down, where most games are won and lost.
It wasn’t about gimmicks and magic tricks; it was about knowing what to do.
‘‘I just feel the flow of the game sometimes,’’ said Johnson, who mentioned that radio play-by-play man Jeff Joniak informed him the Bears passed 18 times in a row near the middle of the game. ‘‘I don’t think of those things in the moment. I just kind of [think], ‘What do I feel like is going to work best next?’ ’’
It’s simple, but it’s not easy.
Former head coach Matt Nagy struggled to find a playing style that fit Mitch Trubisky or Justin Fields, couldn’t establish a consistent rushing attack and was unable to get wide receivers on track.
Johnson has connected with Williams in a way that has led to modest improvement — with much, much more needed — stuck with the run even while navigating limitations in personnel and brought the best out of young wide receivers Rome Odunze and Luther Burden. And by fixing many of the problems around Williams, Johnson has created some leeway for him as he develops.
Former head coach Matt Eberflus never could hire the right offensive coordinator or intervene himself, was only somewhat effective as a problem-solver on defense (his own side of the ball) and was unreliable as a game manager. Johnson has checked all three of those boxes.
There was no chance, for example, that he was going to burn a timeout late in the fourth quarter of a tight game to bail Williams out of a delay-of-game penalty on third-and-eight.
‘‘Those guys know I’m not going to call my timeouts because we’re going to need those later,’’ Johnson said.
It was hard for anyone to guess what would happen with timeouts last season.
Nagy and other head coaches seemingly have thrown their hands up on third-and-long, but that’s when Johnson tends to be at his best. It’s the on-field version of what he constantly says about resilience.
The Bears have converted 42.2% of their third downs this season, which ranks in the top 10 in the NFL and would be their best percentage since 2015. They went 7-for-13 against the Steelers and cleaned up one of those misses by picking up a fourth-and-one on Williams’ eight-yard scramble in the second quarter.
Johnson schemed a play that cleared the middle of the field by sending wide receiver DJ Moore from right to left and set up tight end Colston Loveland one-on-one with inside leverage against a defensive back on third-and-five from the Steelers’ 12-yard line in the second quarter. Williams found him for a touchdown.
On another third-and-five later in the quarter, Johnson sent three receivers deep, prompting the Steelers’ defense to backpedal. But he had Burden break off his route into the open space underneath for a 10-yard completion.
A few plays later, on third-and-nine, he drew up a downfield screen for Burden that got him the ball with four blockers ahead of him as he raced for 19 yards and put the Bears in reach of a field goal that pulled them to 21-17 just before halftime.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s deputy, defensive coordinator Dennis Allen, found a way to hold the Steelers to 21 points — they scored seven on Williams’ fumble in his own end zone in the second quarter — despite playing without five would-be starters. The Bears kept taking hits throughout the game, too, as cornerback Tyrique Stevenson and linebacker Ruben Hyppolite got hurt.
Even as everyone, including Johnson and Williams, sees this isn’t clicking at full capacity yet, there’s a better overall sense of preparedness than the Bears have had in years.
It’s not surprising that it has translated to their best season in years.
With eight victories, Johnson has more than Eberflus ever got in a season and as many as Nagy got in any season after going 12-4 in his debut. The Bears are on the brink of securing their first winning season since 2018, which would end the fourth-longest such streak in the league. There’s no question the organization has taken a step forward; it’s only a question of how big.
The Bears sit atop the NFC North and are in prime playoff position. And while it’ll be difficult for them to keep their grip on that as they take on a brutal homestretch, they’re virtually assured of being in the race all the way to the end.
They’ve had plenty of empty Novembers, Decembers and Januarys in the last several seasons. Welcome back to relevance and respectability. All it took to get there was finally finding a coach who was ready for the job.
