With the game on the line against the 49ers on Sunday, Bears coach Ben Johnson thought he had the play to win it. He called a multi-step trick play that required absolute precision, and with 21 seconds left and Levi’s Stadium roaring, he didn’t flinch.
The Bears ran it beautifully.
From the 49ers’ 13-yard line, quarterback Caleb Williams was on time and on target with a quick pass to tight end Colston Loveland breaking from the right side to the middle of the field, and running back D’Andre Swift weaved effortlessly to his mark to receive a pitch from Loveland with room to run.
It worked. It just didn’t work quite well enough.
The Hook and Ladder play from the end of the Bears-49ers game last night.
Ben Johnson said he was perfectly fine with the play call and when it happened. “There’s plenty of time. We’ve got plenty of good plays.”
Caleb Williams: “We’ve worked the play before … We were going… pic.twitter.com/7ZUkLawKK1
— Eli Ong (@ThePenOfEli) December 29, 2025
With the 49ers in zone coverage, cornerback Deommodore Lenoir and others met Swift at the 4-yard line, and he lunged for another two yards. The Bears had one final play as time ran out, but Williams’ pass to Jahdae Walker was short and the 49ers escaped with a 42-38 victory.
While it didn’t win the game, Johnson’s call said everything about how much the Bears have progressed in his offense.
He struggled through his own frustrations with the offense’s sloppiness in the offseason, and after one particularly ugly practice in August, Johnson warned the team, “If it continues like that, we’re not going to win many games.”
The mistakes eventually stopped, and that’s when the winning started.
Having clinched the NFC North, the Bears are 11-5 going into their final regular-season game Sunday against the Lions and will enter the playoffs next week as the No. 2 or 3 seed in the NFC. They’re third in total offense at 398.6 yards per game. Their 26.6 points per game would be their highest since 2013.
“I’ve got immense amounts of trust for everybody on the offense right now,” Johnson said Monday. “Every week, you just see them go about their business. I’m not going to call a play that I don’t fully believe in, that we can’t execute at the highest level. . . . If we go down, we’re going to go down swinging like that.”
In as close to a high-stakes playoff environment as the Bears will get until the real thing, there was a lot to like about the offense Sunday. Williams played arguably his best game — 25-for-42 passing, 330 yards, two touchdowns, 100.3 passer rating — continuing a trend from the previous two weeks as he appears to be turning a corner at the optimal moment.
With wide receivers Rome Odunze and Olamide Zaccheaus out and DJ Moore playing through illness, rookies Loveland and Luther Burden stepped up — way up. Burden led the Bears with eight catches for 138 yards and a touchdown. Loveland caught six passes for 94 yards and a touchdown.
Swift averaged six yards per carry and scored twice, while power back Kyle Monangai contributed 4.8 per carry.
When everything is clicking that reliably, Johnson has plenty of options. That wasn’t the case in August, when, as the Bears headed into a preseason game against the Bills, he zoomed out and reminded himself and everyone else that it was unrealistic to be operating his full playbook at that stage. He said it could take multiple seasons — and maybe it will. But lately it seems the playbook is open from cover to cover.
“We’ve taken the training wheels off,” Johnson said. “These guys are doing a phenomenal job coming into the building each week and taking a plan and bringing it to life.”
Others are taking notice, too. Lions coach Dan Campbell, Johnson’s former boss, basically threw out his team’s 52-21 stomping of the Bears in Week 2 as he looked ahead to the rematch Sunday. In the first game, the Bears committed penalties all over the field, the score was out of control by halftime, and Williams watched the end of it from the bench.
“They’re more polished and a better team,” Campbell said. “Ben’s done a good job. The system is in. These little [mistakes] that were there in Game 1, Game 2, they’ve begun to go away. They found a run game. Caleb’s playing really well. O-line’s playing really well. . . . They’re playing at a high level. Much more polished.”
Criticism of Johnson’s offense seems to be coming only from himself. Virtually every week, he has brought up a regret in his play-calling. Against the 49ers, he should have gotten the play call in faster on the final snap, he said — Williams felt he didn’t have time to correct a misalignment as the play clock dwindled, which led to an immediate swarm in the backfield. Johnson also second-guessed calling three consecutive passes from first-and-goal at the 10 earlier in the fourth quarter. The Bears didn’t get anywhere with those and settled for a field goal to take a 38-35 lead that didn’t hold up.
It’s not a perfect offense yet, but to be able to say that at this stage is encouraging in itself. This early in their process, the Bears already are firing better than they have in more than a decade.
