The Chicago Bears made waves earlier this week with their hire of offensive wunderkind Ben Johnson as their new head coach.
Bears are finalizing a deal to hire Ben Johnson as their head coach. (via @tompelissero) pic.twitter.com/3gsGxegg5i
— NFL (@NFL) January 20, 2025
On paper, it feels like a home-run.
Over his three seasons in charge, the Lions were the third best offense in the league by EPA/play and fifth best in success rate.
Over the course of three-year run, Johnson has shown himself to be a Paul Thomas Anderson type of play-caller who can deliver both steak and sizzle.
This season was his Boogie Nights.
Down to down, the Lions were the most effective offense in the league leading the league in success rate.
All 9 Jahmyr Gibbs TDs vs the Vikings so far (4 games) with analysts talking about how bad the pick was in the background pic.twitter.com/4V8jRXNWc9
— šŖšµš®š š« (@GibbsForSix) January 10, 2025
They were second in the league in yards per play and first in first downs. They moved the ball both in the air and on the ground like it was nobodyās business and led the league in scoring.
This is the bigger ideas about capitalism and family. Itās the steak.
On the rare occasion when they got stuck, Johnson was able to dial up some of the most creative trick plays I have ever seen to try and manufacture explosive plays. The best one was the fake fumble touchdown to Sam LaPorta, but he had classics all season long.
Ben Johnson you are a sicko…
Lions Fake Fumble TDpic.twitter.com/2lJYbnLtoo
(via @NFL)— B/R Gridiron (@brgridiron) December 22, 2024
This is the margarita scene. The sizzle.
Of course, the sizzle went too far in the divisional round loss against the Commanders, but the Lions danced with the one that brung them and I canāt hate that.
In any case, itās not easy to find a guy that can do both.
Therefore, I have no question that Ben Johnson is a good playcaller. Whether heās a good head coach is a separate question, the answer to which we canāt possibly know yet.
In fact, we may never know because the Chicago Bears are not a great job.
Nedsā own James Caughlin ranked them as the NFLās second-best open job last week, and he might be right. But that says more about the calibre of jobs that are open rather than the quality of the Bears job.
Firstly, there are football issues with the Ben Johnson, quarterback Caleb Williams, and the Bears roster construction generally.
For instance, Ben Johnsonās offense was a death star with Jared Goff at the controls. Goff is brilliant at keeping the train on the tracks and operating within structure.
Caleb Williams wants to make his own tracks through corn mazes or something. His biggest asset is that heās a creator out of structure rather than a facilitator inside one. Heās the opposite of Goff in that way.
Similarly, the Lions dominated off the back of an elite offensive line that gave up 33 sacks last year. The Bears led the league in sacks taken with 68. Some of that is Caleb, but some is the line as well
But the football stuff can be fixed. You can coach quarterback play. Weāve seen offensive lines come together in a year. Maybe even the defence improves with Dennis Allen at the controls.
All of that could happen.
My concerns are for reasons far beyond football.
There is organisational dysfunction at the heart of the Chicago Bears.
Since 2004, the Bears have very seldom had timing synergy between the two most important people in the organisation other than the owners, the head coach and the general manager. Only Christopher Nolan hates linear timelines more than the Bears.
Letās go through it.
Coach Lovie Smith was hired in 2004 by GM Jerry Angelo.
Angelo made it through 2011 to be replaced by Phil Emery.
Smith got all the way to 2013.
Smith was then fired by Phil Emery after the 2013 season in which the Bears won 10 games.
Itās funny, because he looks how I felt after the Phil Emery-Marc Trestman era. https://t.co/3VyyP4ABo3
— Robert Mays (@robertmays) June 11, 2019
Lovie was fired because Emery wanted his own guy, Marc Trestman as the coach. Trestman lasted a year.
Now, weāre in 2015.
The Bears get everyone on the same page and the same timeline again, hiring Ryan Pace as GM and John Fox as head coach. Fox made it until the 2017 season.
Now weāre back on the Interstellar rocket ship as the timelines get messed up with the Bears allowing Ryan Pace to hire former Chiefs offensive co-ordinator Matt Nagy to develop their stud quarterback Mitch Trubisky in 2018.
Matthew McConaughey was yelling through a bookshelf from the past to stop that one.
Pace and Nagy make it to the end of 2021 before both getting fired.
Then the Bears bring in GM Ryan Poles and coach Matt Eberflus in 2022.
Weāre back on the straight and narrow.
Only no. We arenāt.
Eberflus doesnāt make it through the 2024 season and Poles gets to pick his second new head coach, Ben Johnson to develop their stud new quarterback Caleb Williams.
Do you see a pattern?
The Bears try and get on a normal path then they gleefully jump off it.
And theyāve done it again.
You have a GM with shaky job security picking his second coach to save a quarterback one year into his career. All three are on different timelines.
BIG report on Waddle and Silvy today that Ryan Poles is frustrated having to report to Warren and might not have taken the job if he knew about this power dynamic.
Wowza. Keeps getting worse at Halas hall. Not a situation a sought after coach would want to enter. #DaBears pic.twitter.com/WeD3vOsEwU
— Clay Harbor (@clayharbs82) December 10, 2024
If Poles gets sacked after this season, as he very well might if Ben Johnson canāt turn it around in a year, then theyāre going to bring in a new GM who will probably want to pick a new coach and a new quarterback and so the merry-go-round begins again.
Unsurprisingly, given the above, the McCaskey family that owns the Bears isnāt exactly the Eagan family and Lumon Industries when it comes to corporate direction.
But beyond being incompetent, the McCaskeys are also cheap. Since the 2011 CBA that changed the way resources are allocated in the NFL, the Bears have only been in the top-10 in the NFL in cash spending twice (ninth in 2013, first in 2018).
Then consider the Bearsā mooted move to Arlington Heights, deeply unclear reporting lines, and history of offensive ineptitude.
Put it all together , add a potato and baby we got a hard job stew going!
On a football level, this might be a good job on paper even with the issues I already outlined.
I will grant you that.
But everything else says to me that Ben Johnson has been tasked with turning around the Titanic. Good luck to him.
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