Bears head coach Ben Johnson grew up playing the ‘‘Madden’’ video-game series.
He had no favorite teams, but he had a favorite circumstance.
‘‘I always liked taking the bad teams, putting them into franchise mode and building them up from there,’’ he said Friday.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, right?
‘‘Yeah,’’ he said with a smile.
Johnson, a first-year head coach, is doing well in his real-life rebuild. The Bears are 7-3 entering their home game Sunday against the Steelers and know they have to find at least three victories the rest of the way — against the hardest remaining schedule in the NFL — to state their playoff case.
To get there, the Bears will have to play the way Johnson approached the video game when he was a kid: by passing the ball well.
Quarterback Caleb Williams should be happy to see the Steelers, who, despite having what Johnson called ‘‘werewolves’’ as pass rushers, allow the most passing yards in the NFL. The Bears will be playing without their three starting linebackers, so they might need Williams to win a shootout, anyway.
There has been only one game this season — the barnburner against the Bengals — that Johnson thinks the Bears won specifically because of their offense. The game against the Steelers might be No. 2.
On Friday, Johnson sounded as though Williams was ready to do just that.
‘‘I see a guy that is getting significantly better every week, whether the stats look that way or not,’’ Johnson said. ‘‘From a coach’s lens, I think we feel it. His approach is very sound with what he’s doing right now.’’
Better stats would help, however.
After the first six weeks of the season, in which the Bears played five games, Williams ranked 15th in the NFL with a 98 passer rating. Since then, he has ranked 23rd with an 82.2 passer rating.
Williams is coming off a 68.9 passer rating last Sunday against the Vikings — he was only slightly better than J.J. McCarthy — and has been above the league average of 92.6 only once in the last five games. Of course, the Bears have won four of those games, three of them on last-minute scores.
‘‘I think [Johnson] has provided that belief, that confidence, but also the discipline for us,’’ Williams said. ‘‘When you have all those different things and belief in your coach, belief in each other, you start to be able to win some games — and maybe win some unfavorable games.’’
Williams isn’t ready to celebrate them for too long. As uncharacteristically good as things have gone for the Bears this season, he knows circumstances change quickly in the NFL. He lived that last season, when the Bears started 4-2 before losing 10 games in a row.
‘‘I think we feel good with where we’re at, but you also do understand that things can turn,’’ Williams said. ‘‘We have a whole season left, basically, with, what . . . seven games left? And so things can still turn fast in those ways.
‘‘It’s us understanding where we’re at, understanding where we can be and focusing on where we are at this moment.”
Williams is where the Bears want him to be in his development. They spent the offseason and training camp overloading him with information. It wasn’t until last month they first saw it pay off.
Starting after the Bears’ bye in Week 5, Johnson said he noticed Williams develop a mastery of the weeklong routine at Halas Hall, from cleaning up mistakes after a game to installing a game plan to learning what works best during the week.
‘‘Everybody was looking at us funny for throwing a bunch at him,’’ offensive coordinator Declan Doyle said. ‘‘We knew that this was kind of the vision of where we wanted to go. We were going to give him a lot of information that he was going to have to process, and he was going to learn how to process it quicker and get better at it.’’
Johnson called Williams’ ability to apply information quickly during the course of a game week the ‘‘starting point,’’ something reliable to build on.
‘‘We applied a lot of pressure throughout the spring and throughout training camp, really, with this in mind — to where when they get out there on game day, everything hopefully slows down a little bit,‘’ Johnson said. ‘‘And they don’t have a coach yelling at them in their ear anymore. They can just go out there and play free. So I think we’re reaping the rewards from that right now.’’
Williams’ improvement during the next seven games might reap even more.
‘‘I think we’re going to continue to see him play faster, play with more anticipation the more he gets reps with these particular plays, the ones that we feature the most,’’ Johnson said. ‘‘I am very pleased right now with where he’s at.’’