The Bears have gone from having the worst coach in the NFL to, perhaps, the best.
That’s quite a swing, but so is their improvement from 14-32 under Matt Eberflus to 11-4 and streaking toward the playoffs in Ben Johnson’s debut season. The Bears can clinch their first NFC North title since 2018 on Sunday with a win at the 49ers.
Johnson and 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan both are strong Coach of the Year candidates, though the Patriots’ Mike Vrabel is the betting favorite and was the runaway winner in a recent NFL Network poll of team executives.
As impressive of a job as Shanahan, the Jaguars’ Liam Coen and others have done, it’ll come down to Johnson and Vrabel. Vrabel, by the way, was one of the first candidates to interview with the Bears after they fired Eberflus.
Coach of the Year is a somewhat misleading name for the award because it typically goes to a coach whose team pulled off a surprising turnaround. Bill Belichick, Andy Reid, Mike Tomlin and Sean Payton are all future Hall of Famers, for example, but won it just five times in 93 seasons.
The best evidence for how far Johnson and Vrabel have taken their teams is a look back to their midseason slap-fight at Soldier Field last season, coached by Eberflus and Jerod Mayo. The Patriots won 19-3, but neither team did anything particularly well, and it was a forgettable afternoon as the Bears plunged toward 5-12 and the Patriots toward 4-13.
Each is now seeded second in its conference and still fighting for the top spot.
With two games remaining, Johnson already has boosted the Bears’ win total from last season by six to 11-4 and Vrabel’s Patriots have enjoyed a league-best eight-win jump to 12-3.
Vrabel is the leader because he has far more name recognition and a heftier résumé than Johnson. Vrabel was a fixture of the Patriots’ dynasty as a player and had a successful run with the Titans, including winning Coach of the Year in 2021.
Johnson has been widely regarded as the next great offensive mind and got the endorsement from quarterback Caleb Williams as “best coach in the world,” but that doesn’t hold quite as much weight.
Nonetheless, Johnson deserves it.
As he waited for the right job to come open, he said he viewed the Bears as “a sleeping giant” that should’ve been much better than they were under Eberflus. He has proven himself right this season.
Johnson said at his introductory news conference in January that there were “a number of reasons why” the Bears underperformed, “which is why I’m here. I’ll get to the bottom of that, and we’ll see if we can get it corrected and cleaned up.”
There’s no doubt he has done that.
While the Bears made significant upgrades on their offensive line and drafted three offensive players in the first two rounds of the draft, most of their core on both sides of the ball is the same — especially Williams. Of the 22 players who would be starting if healthy, 15 were on the team last season.
Johnson inherited a team that ranked 32nd in total offense before his arrival and vaulted it to No. 4. On defense, where he had no experience whatsoever but made a smart hire in coordinator Dennis Allen, the Bears have stepped from 27th to 24th despite injuries and appear to be improving as they approach the playoffs.
Vrabel has been impressive in both areas as well, and his offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels has second-year quarterback Drake Maye playing at an MVP level.
But Johnson also took on a team that played in the league’s toughest division — all four teams are .500 or better — and had been overwhelmed by it. The Bears hadn’t won a meaningful game against the Packers since 2018, and in Johnson’s first season he leveled out the rivalry.
There are no freebies in the North, unlike the AFC East, where the Patriots have four games against the Jets and Dolphins.
Johnson said going into the season he anticipated making “plenty of mistakes” as a first-time head coach, but it’s hard to think of them other than his repeated criticism of his own play calls. He has coached well, managed his staff well, motivated players, aced in-game decisions and handled the public-facing part of the job confidently.
It’s as though everything that was wrong with the Bears and exasperated their fans for years was instantly fixed with one hire. That’s how you win Coach of the Year.
More important than winning an award, though, is whether the Bears have found their long-term answer. They’ve craved the stability the Steelers have had with Tomlin, but fumbled hire after hire.
There have been several times they thought they finally nailed it, and, in fact, they’ve been exactly here before. As a first-time head coach in 2018, Matt Nagy steered them to a seven-win improvement at 12-4 and a rare North championship.
That fizzled faster than you can say “double doink,” however, and all his flaws were exposed while going 22-27 the rest of his tenure.
It turned out he wasn’t the magic behind Patrick Mahomes and couldn’t turn Mitch Trubisky into a star. His staff was anything but cohesive. He stumbled into nonsensical explanations at the microphone.
It’s a cautionary tale and a reminder that Johnson has tons left to prove. The playoffs will reveal quite a bit about his capability. But so far, every indication is that he was more than ready for this job and is highly unlikely to unravel the way his predecessors did.