Ben Johnson was the only man who could have saved the Bears from themselves.
Ben Johnson, born in 1986, grew up in the heyday of the Madden era. Johnson’s signature style of play calling has always seemed heavily indebted to the way someone would play video game football, with aggressive fourth down calls, intricate passing designs, and a love of mobile quarterbacks. The Chicago Bears head coach couldn’t hide a smile when a reporter asked if he ever played Madden as a younger man last season.
“I always liked taking the bad teams in franchise mode and try to build them up from there,” Johnson said.
Johnson is now living the dream of thousands of kids who learned about football in part from playing Madden. I’m one of those people. I’m a year younger than Johnson, and spent way too much time as a teenager simulating Madden dynasties, making trades, managing the salary cap, and throwing darts in the draft when I should have been, I don’t know, talking to girls or something. I even wrote a cool 500,000-word series during the pandemic about taking Western Illinois from worst-to-first in College Hoops 2K8, a game released when Johnson was a senior at North Carolina.
Johnson rose to prominence as the NFL’s next great offensive mind during his time as the coordinator of the Detroit Lions. He could have had a head coaching offer from the Washington Commanders during the 2024 offseason, but he pulled his name out of the running to return to Detroit for one more year. That decision paved the way for Chicago to hire him a year later following a disastrous season from Matt Eberflus that highlighted all the ways the Bears were horribly mismanaged in Caleb Williams’ rookie season.
Johnson has been nothing short of a godsend for Chicago since taking the job, and on Monday night, he cemented himself as one of the game’s best head coaches already by leading the Bears to a shocking 27-7 win over the Philadelphia Eagles with his third string quarterback.
One of the talking points coming into the night was how Johnson had never called plays for a QB who wasn’t selected No. 1 overall in the NFL Draft. The Bears coach was humbled by Brian Flores’ blitzing defense in a rain-soaked 9-3 loss to the Minnesota Vikings the previous week, and now he was set to be without Williams for multiple weeks as he recovered from a Grade 2 hamstring strain. With backup Tyson Bagent getting concussed on the last play of the Vikings loss, Johnson turned to Case Keenum, a man only 21 months younger than himself, and someone who had not started a game since 2023.
The whole world expected the Bears to come out trying to establish the run. Instead, Johnson had Keenum firing from the opening snap, with pass attempts on the first two plays of the game followed by a gutsy fourth down call that saw the veteran QB connect with rookie Sam Roush to keep the chains moving. The Bears eventually punched it in on their first drive with a crafty little shovel pass to Luther Burden. It set the stage for an incredible night that saw Keenum finish with 247 yards and two touchdowns through the air, plus one more rushing touchdown.
Keenum deserves every bit of praise he’s getting Tuesday morning for turning back the clock in such dramatic fashion — but even he knows who really deserves the credit.
“Ben Johnson was cooking tonight,” Keenum said in his post-game interview. “He was in his bag.”
The key for Keenum was getting the ball out quick. His average time to throw was 2.28 seconds, well below league-average, against an Eagles defense typically known for getting after the quarterback. After looking unprepared for the onslaught of Vikings pass rushers a week ago, the Bears’ protection up front was on point all game, and Keenum never hesitated to snap off a throw when he thought an opening would be there.
Keenum’s rushing touchdown was the ultimate example of Johnson being in his bag. The coach pulled out a play used by Mike Martz in the 2002 Super Bowl called the “sucker sneak” where both guards pull out wide and the QB lunges for the end zone. Pulling this off with any QB feels like a tall order — but to do it with a 38-year-old feels more like a magic trick.
In hiring Johnson, the Bears didn’t just find their first great head coach since firing Mike Ditka in 1993, they also landed the rare type of leader who could stabilize the entire franchise. The Bears are still a family-owned operation with the grandchildren of founder George Halas controlling the team, but they never had the football acumen of their patriarch. For years, the franchise literally had its accountant running the show, and the dysfunction at the top of the organization seeped down to every level. The Bears could never get the GM, head coach, and QB on the same timeline, resulting in a vicious cycle of turnover at the most important levels of the team.
Johnson accepted the Bears job largely because Caleb Williams was already on board. The Bears should be thanking their lucky stars for that. As Johnson and Williams have turned around the on-field product, the franchise remains totally clueless off the field, trying and failing for years to land a new stadium defined by empty threats of moving to Indiana and multiple botched self-imposed deadlines. Team president Kevin Warren is a running punchline. The only person in the organization with any power who really knows what they’re doing is Johnson.
Without Johnson, the Bears would very likely still be lost in the wilderness. With him, they’re dreaming of setting NFL scoring records, winning Super Bowls, and reimagining what offensive football can look like in this city. Johnson is already on the record saying he’s comfortable with this being his last job. In a best case scenario, he could be here for multiple decades, enjoying the type of longevity only the game’s true legends are afforded.
Johnson proved he was really good by taking the Bears to the playoffs in year one. On Monday, he showed that his genius isn’t limited to having a prodigious quarterback. Johnson really does feel like he’s taking the Bears from worst-to-first, just like he dreamed about on his PlayStation more than 20 years ago. The Bears are so lucky they were the team to picked to run his most important franchise mode sim yet.