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 his players and assistants is black and white: Perfection is the starting point. There’s no such thing as running a play partly right. “You have that grace in the back of your head” that absolute precision is impossible, he said, but the closer that players can get to it, the more successful they’ll be.
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 or not. Johnson lets them know.
“If you live in the gray, that’s where the bad stuff happens,” he 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.”
Johnson observed that the biggest hang-up among the coaches he has seen fail is a fear of confrontation. Judging by what Bears players said last season about wanting more accountability — and what they said about wanting to be coached harder after going 5-12 — that was a problem under Eberflus.
“I’m OK with [confrontation],” Johnson said. “That’s part of the job.”
He added that he seeks to “identify the issue and learn from it and keep it moving,” not wallowing once it has been addressed. And he plans to apply the same approach to his own mistakes (“I’m going to make plenty here this year,” he acknowledged).
On the flip side, he never misses a chance to emphasize to players “how beautiful this all is when it comes together.”
When he met with players after the Bears hired him in January, all of them to a man brought up the word “accountability,” he said, flinging the door wide open for him to enforce it early and often.
Some Bears players still don’t know what to make of him. Wide receiver DJ Moore said Johnson “can get mad and then start smiling at the same time,” although 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.
He has walked that tightrope nimbly so far, as evidenced by how highly Williams spoke of him throughout a turbulent camp.
The Bears hope their connection will one day rise to the level of the Chiefs’ Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes. In the spring, Johnson and Williams laid some groundwork for that sort of partnership over espresso and tea.
That’s right. The head coach and starting quarterback of the Chicago Bears sat at a Starbucks in Lake Forest for an hour and a half, taking mostly about life. Johnson had an Americano with soy; Williams had matcha with milk, cinnamon and honey. Maybe that will be the opening scene of a movie someday if this all goes fantastically. For now, it’s about understanding each other and building a bond so Johnson’s 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 highs and lows of a season, but Johnson is off to a strong start. The Bears needed a truth teller and a coach with legitimate expertise, especially with quarterbacks. They needed someone bold and innovative.
Johnson is all of the above — and a completely different coach than they’re used to. Thank goodness.