Expectations are everything in coaching, and the Bears saw that clearly in the two coaches they hired before bringing in Ben Johnson this year.
Many forget that despite how underwhelming Matt Nagy’s tenure was, he left with a winning record — joining Lovie Smith as the only coaches after Mike Ditka’s run to do so. There were virtually no expectations of Nagy upon arrival in 2018 coming off a brutal 5-11 season. He and the Bears stunned the NFL by going 12-4, taking advantage of a world-class defense, and Nagy beat out future Hall of Famers Andy Reid and Sean Payton for Coach of the Year.
That, of course, set a high bar that he never cleared again. When the Bears went 8-8 the next two seasons, it landed with a thud, and all it took was one losing season after that for Nagy to get booted.
Matt Eberflus, meanwhile, oversaw the second-worst season in franchise history by going 3-14 in 2022. However, no alarms went off at that point. No one planned on getting much from the Bears in an obvious teardown season to begin general manager Ryan Poles’ rebuild. The problem for Eberflus was that as the roster improved, he didn’t and was fired during his third season.
That’s why Johnson is here, and the expectations going into his first season with the Bears — and first season ever as a head coach at any level — are difficult to pin down.
There’s rationale to demand a lot and a little and everything in between.
Johnson has been the most coveted coaching candidate in the NFL for years, and the Bears were the team to finally lure him from a very good job as Lions offensive coordinator. It seems like half the league has chased him. There is consensus that he’s the next offensive genius, and with a roster that’s fully built out to win now, so he’d better.
Yet part of this feels a lot like last season for the Bears. Poles believed his rebuild was complete, and there appeared to be a dozen potential Pro Bowl picks in the starting lineup. The only catch was that the Bears had a rookie quarterback in Caleb Williams, but the hype was so high that many inside and outside the organization thought that wouldn’t be an issue.
Sounds a little too familiar, and perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned. While the view of Johnson locally and nationally is sky high, he’s 39 and has never done this. He’s had three seasons as an offensive coordinator. It’s unfair and unrealistic to think he will get everything right in his first season.
So if vaulting the Bears all the way to championship contention seems like asking too much and hoping for merely a small step forward from going 5-12 last season feels overly complacent, what’s the standard for Johnson this season?
More than anything, the expectation on him is to elevate Williams to the upper third of the league as his position. Even that goal comes with the disclaimer that most quarterbacks need time to adapt to a new play-caller, veterans included, and it won’t be smooth at the start.
But Williams is the engine for all the Bears’ hopes this season and beyond, and the most important thing Johnson can do is ignite him. Williams said he wants to be coached hard, and Johnson is about to make him prove it.
If Williams is thriving in October, the wins should take care of themselves. The Bears still have the second-hardest schedule based on opponents’ 2024 winning percentage, but there’s enough talent on both sides of the ball that a strong second season by Williams will propel them to the playoffs.
And there’s the reasonable target for Johnson: A flourishing and still ascending quarterback and a playoff berth. If he checks both boxes, this will be a fun season to watch and the future will be thrilling.
The only real complaint at that point will be that the Bears didn’t make a coaching change sooner to start this process a year earlier.
Entrusting Williams’ NFL onboarding to Eberflus and former offensive Shane Waldron goes down as an epic mistake and undoubtedly delayed his development. The outlook would be so much better and clearer if the Bears weren’t coming off a season in which they had to sort out which of Williams’ deficiencies were on him and which were the result of coaching malpractice.
It also cost the Bears a season of Williams’ rookie contract window. They’re paying him an average of less than $10 million through 2027, and that’s a precious opportunity when 16 quarterbacks around the league are making at least quadruple that per season. Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Joe Burrow and Brock Purdy all reached Super Bowls during their rookie contract window, when their teams had the luxury of splashing money around throughout the rest of the roster.
If Johnson gets Williams headed toward their level this season and gets the Bears to the playoffs, they’ll still have two more seasons to make that kind of charge. The expectation for Johnson this season is to take a legitimate first step in that direction.
