As the Bears stacked up wins with narrow escapes to put themselves atop the NFC North and firmly in the playoff race for the first time in years, coach Ben Johnson never declared an arrival.
The only promise he made was that his team would be ready to compete with anyone late in the season, and the Bears proved him right Friday with a 24-15 victory over the Eagles.
It was their most impressive win. And not only did it keep them in front of the Packers in the division at 9-3 and clinch their first winning season since 2018, it sent an emphatic message to the rest of the NFL: The Bears are for real.
No more qualifiers. No more asterisks. They just went on the road and beat the reigning champs.
“These guys should feel pretty good about what they just did,” Johnson said. “It’s hard to go on the road and beat a good team like that. Yet, they still know we have got to get back to work next week.”
Johnson felt pretty good, too. So good, in fact, that he ripped his shirt off during his post-game speech in the locker room, cashing in on Wiener’s Circle’s offer for a free hot dog day. The well-known Lincoln Park hot dog stand announced it’ll be Tuesday.
Anyway, as he has for most of the season, Johnson had all the answers.
No matter what all the Bears still need to figure out with their roster, including pushing quarterback Caleb Williams to the next level, they’re in capable hands with Johnson.
He’s unveiled splashy trick plays, but the real secrets to his success have been fine-tuning the young talent, consistently staying a step ahead of opponents and pivoting during games. Failures in those facets undid predecessors Matt Eberflus and Matt Nagy, but Johnson, even as a first-year head coach, has been masterful.
The evidence was everywhere against the Eagles.
Running back D’Andre Swift ran for 125 yards and a touchdown and has looked like a completely different player compared to last season. His partner, rookie seventh-round pick Kyle Monangai, piled up 130 and a touchdown. Monangai was the 22nd running back drafted this year, but ranks third in his class in yardage. Together, they averaged 6.4 yards per carry.
“We had a good amount of volume for such a short week in terms of the run game, the number of formations and concepts that we had up, our guys handled it really well,” Johnson said. “As a play-caller, it’s that balancing act of if you hang with something a little bit too long, then all of the sudden you’re looking at a third-and-long and wondering why the drive stalled.”
If anything, he regretted that he didn’t lean more on the ground game. The Bears ran 47 times and passed 37.
Johnson had a vision of how he wanted the running game to look — violent and vertical — and reached outside his circle to hire running backs coach Eric Bieniemy to establish it.
Rookie tight end Colston Loveland and wide receiver Luther Burden both are expanding their roles, and that only happens with improvement and knowing the offense.
Johnson was in lockstep with veteran quarterback Jared Goff when he was the Lions’ offensive coordinator, but has adapted well to starting from scratch with Williams.
Williams struggled most of the game in the cold and wind. It would’ve been hard to imagine the Bears pulling off a win like that on a day when their quarterback completed 17 of 36 passes for 154 yards with a touchdown and an interception for a season-low 56.9 passer rating, but Johnson found a way to work around that with the rushing attack.
Williams was strong at the end, as he often has been, and closed with six consecutive completions totaling 64 yards, including the 28-yard touchdown pass to tight end Cole Kmet with 6:19 left to put the Bears ahead 24-9 and bury the Eagles.
Defensive coordinator Dennis Allen was sharp, too. He’s been making the best of challenging situations all season, mostly because of injuries, and that’s another credit to Johnson.
Eberflus and Nagy couldn’t straighten out their own side of the ball, let alone make the right hire on the opposite side. Johnson went strictly on merit with Allen, whom he’d never met before talking to him about the job opening.
The Bears were here before with Nagy in 2018, his first season. They started 8-3 and finished 12-4 with the North crown. Then they sputtered in the playoffs and went 22-27 the next three seasons.
But this feels different. Johnson isn’t winning with gimmicks or because he was gifted a world-class defense to cover for him. The way he’s running the Bears is sound and straightforward, and it’s going to work regardless of the ups and downs of his personnel.
There’s still a tough road ahead for the Bears, continuing next week against the Packers at Lambeau Field, but doubts are dissipating. It finally feels safe to hope.
If they can beat the Eagles, why can’t they stand nose-to-nose with the Packers, Lions and others? The Eagles are in a slump, true, but they still beat the other three NFC North teams.
The Bears likely need only one more win to secure a playoff spot, and that alone would be a landmark for them. But Johnson never set his sights that low. He came from a team that was in championship-or-bust mode, and that’s how he thinks.
He knows this is progress. He also knows it’s not enough.
“We’re still not at what we’re capable of being,” he said.
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