There’s a big difference between the negligible lies NFL coaches tell in the name of secrecy about injuries and scheme and the football gaslighting and accountability avoidance that have become a Bears tradition.
The last seven seasons were exhausting as Matt Nagy and Matt Eberflus routinely stepped to the microphone and told everyone that the miserable game they’d just watched wasn’t as bad as it looked. Eberflus seldom took responsibility for a mistake and defended his final one as Bears coach on a Zoom call while management met down the hall and decided to fire him.
The new guy, Ben Johnson, has a lot to learn as a first-time head coach, but he’s adamant about keeping it real. And in the months leading up to the Bears’ season opener Monday against the Vikings, he’s been letting honesty fly everywhere from the practice field to the podium.
He opened training camp by telling everyone his expectation for quarterback Caleb Williams was to complete 70% of his passes, both in practices and for the season, and a few weeks later had no reservation about revealing he’d been around just 55%. Facts are facts.
He was direct about the offense struggling in camp, warning everyone “we’re not going to win many games” if the sloppiness continued. He volunteered later that this team just isn’t ready for some of the sophisticated plays he ran in Year 3 as Lions offensive coordinator last season. And he admitted after the preseason game against the Bills that he’d botched a minor clock-management issue going into halftime.
Refreshing. Necessary. Admirable.
And for Johnson, normal.
“I’m not trying to do it for style points,” he told the Sun-Times. “This is who I am. As we get into the season, that same bluntness and honesty is still going to be there.”
Johnson’s approach with players and assistants is black and white. Perfection is the starting point, and there’s no such thing as running a play partly right. From there, he said, “You have that grace in the back of your head,” that absolute precision is impossible, but the closer the players get to it, the more successful they’ll be.
But in the leadup to his first season and as the Bears prepare for the ever-brutal NFC North, he has been all over every misstep on the practice field. No one wonders whether they did something correctly. They know.
“If you live in the gray, that’s where the bad stuff happens,” Johnson said. “I’ve seen more bad football in this league than good football, and one of the issues with some of those bad teams is the ambiguity.
“Everyone in this league is highly competitive. They’re passionate about their jobs. And the clearer we can be with how we get them to improve, the better off we’re all going to be.”
Among coaches he’s seen fail, Johnson observed “their biggest hang-up is they were afraid of confrontation. Judging by what players said last season about wanting more accountability and what they said after going 5-12 about wanting to be coached harder, that was a problem under Eberflus.
“I’m OK with it,” Johnson said. “That’s part of the job.”
He seeks to “identify the issue and learn from it and keep it moving,” no need to linger and wallow once it’s been addressed. He called it “natural,” then, to apply the same process to owning his own mistakes — “I’m going to make plenty here this year,” he acknowledged — and being self-aware about his own development.
He also never misses a chance to emphasize to players “how beautiful this all is when it comes together” if he sees everything click. There’s a balance.
As Johnson met with players after the Bears hired him in January, he said all of them — “to a man” — brought up the word “accountability.” Them requesting it flung the door wide open for him to enforce it early and often.
Johnson can be difficult to read, and some Bears players still don’t know what to make of him. Wide receiver DJ Moore said it’s confusing because “he can get mad and then start smiling at the same time,” though Moore has been quick to recognize “the evil eye” and be more attentive to avoid it.
Generally, though, they’ve welcomed his clarity. Williams called it incredibly helpful compared to the uncertainty he encountered as a rookie. It’s hard enough to make it in the NFL, let alone when you’re never quite sure if you’re doing things right, wide receiver Rome Odunze said.
“The feedback is not going to be all sunshine and rainbows,” right guard Jonah Jackson, who played under Johnson in Detroit, told the Sun-Times. “This is a man’s business, a man’s game, and we’re not little kids anymore. It’s what you need.”
It illuminates where improvements are needed, but the challenge for Johnson is to convey that without it becoming so abrasive that people can’t stand working with him.
There has to be a real relationship and trust, and Johnson said, “The better you know somebody, you know how hard you can push.” His entire mission as a coach is “just to simply make these guys the best versions of themselves,” and if they believe he has their best interests at heart, they’ll embrace his tough love.
That’s especially complicated with a quarterback. Johnson must simultaneously be Williams’ biggest supporter and most stringent critic.
Johnson has walked that tightrope nimbly so far, evidenced by how highly Williams spoke of him throughout a turbulent training camp. The Bears hope this coach-quarterback connection will one day rise to the level of Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, and Johnson and Williams laid some groundwork for the partnership over espresso and tea in spring.
That’s right. The head coach and starting quarterback of the Chicago Bears sat in a Starbucks in Lake Forest and talked about their future.
It might sound like a strange dream you had, but it really happened. Johnson had an Americano with soy; Williams sipped matcha with milk, cinnamon and honey. They chatted for about an hour and a half, “more about life” than anything else, Johnson recalled.
Maybe that’ll be the opening scene of a movie someday if this all goes fantastically. For now, though, it was about understanding each other and building a bond so that hard coaching isn’t misinterpreted as adversarial.
“That’s the art of coaching,” Johnson said. “It’s relationship building. We’ve spent a lot of time together, both in the meeting room, but also individually to where he knows where I’m coming from and I know what his goals are — not just for himself, but for this team.
“When you keep those goals the main thing, it’s easy to strive together to get there.”
None of this has been tested through the surges and plunges and of a season, but Johnson is off to a strong start.
The Bears have needed a truth teller, and there’s no doubt they have one now. They needed a coach with legitimate expertise, especially with quarterbacks, and Johnson sure seems to know what he’s talking about. They needed someone bold and innovative, and he’s undeniably both.
Johnson is a completely different coach than they’re used to. Thank goodness.