The Bears are hiring Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson to be the 19th head coach in franchise history. It’s a move that, historically, doesn’t seem like a Chicago Bears move.
Since George McCaskey became chairman of the Bears in 2011, the team has not won a single playoff game. They have topped the .500 mark just twice, going through five head coaches in the process (six, if you include interim head coach Thomas Brown). They hired Marc Trestman over eventual Super Bowl winner Bruce Arians in 2013, and they chose Matt Eberflus without interviewing the likes of Kevin O’Connell or Mike McDaniel for the head coaching position in 2022.
This time, though, it feels like the Bears made the obvious move.
Johnson’s tenure in Detroit is well-documented and well-respected. The Lions’ offense graded second in EPA per play with him as the play-caller, second in yards per game, and first in points per game in 2024. This, of course, came after Detroit finished third in yards per game and fifth in points per game in 2023.
“The way he’s explaining the plays, the way he’s detailed with how we’ve got to run these routes in the red zone, I just knew the way he was talking to us, it just felt different,” [Amon-Ra] St. Brown recalled. “I told one of my teammates, I forgot who it was, I was like, ‘Bro, when Ben gets up there, he knows exactly what he’s talking about, he’s telling us what he sees in this play, what he wants us to do. There’s no gray area. It’s super detailed.’”
As the offensive play-caller for a Lions team that went a combined 27-7 over the last two seasons, Johnson helped resurrect the career of Jared Goff, who went from a throw-in piece in their Matthew Stafford trade with the Rams to career-high totals in touchdowns, passer rating, and completion percentage.
“He was always a guy, when things were hard, that I could confide in,” [Jared] Goff says of Johnson. “Sometimes he had no answer — he’d sit there and listen to me, and that would be the end of it. Sometimes he’d give me a little bit of help. But mostly, he was just a good resource of knowledge and somebody I could rely on.”
Make no mistake — this is no Matt Nagy. While Nagy served just six games as the Chiefs’ primary play-caller, Johnson took over as Detroit’s play-caller on offense starting in 2022. After a 1-6 start to the season, the Lions finished the year on a hot streak to end up at 9-8, winning eight of their last 10 games and scoring over 30 points in five of them. He is a proven, capable play-caller who has commanded the Lions’ offense and powered them from a laughingstock of the league to an utter juggernaut.
“He would be worthy of [a head coaching position],” [Dan] Campbell said at his end-of-season news conference. “I think a ton of him. I think he’s – I’ve said it before, I just think he’s extremely bright, he’s creative. He’s organized. He’s a great communicator. I mean, he just, he’s got it.”
As of this writing, the financial terms for Johnson’s contract have not been revealed. However, considering his reputation around the league and the widespread interest in him as an NFL head coach, one could assume his deal will well surpass the $10 million mark annually. For reference, Eberflus made roughly $4.5 million a year on his deal, making him one of the lowest-paid head coaches in the league at the time.
Make no mistake about it: this isn’t a mom-and-pop move like what the Bears have made in the past.
The Bears have years of making questionable decisions at key personnel positions to their name. One could only feel like they were only making things harder for themselves by hanging onto head coaches a year too long, not surrounding young quarterbacks with a proper offensive line, and just flat-out making bad signings in free agency, as well as at head coach and key coordinator spots.
For once, the Bears went with the consensus top move. They presumably forked over big money to hire Johnson, giving them a much-needed infusion of creativity on the offensive side of the ball. They didn’t over-complicate things, they didn’t cheap out, and they acted with decisiveness and swiftness.
For one, the Chicago Bears acted like the Chicago Bears.
