The Chicago Bears have a new head coach in Ben Johnson who wasted little time remaking the roster in his image, particularly on the offensive side of the football.
However, Johnson’s doing so wasn’t merely an issue of adding several new starting offensive lineman and multiple new targets in the pass game. It was also an endeavor that has involved the new staff reshaping Caleb Williams as a quarterback.
Williams displayed several flaws during his rookie campaign in 2024, though Johnson and company’s biggest concern involving the QB wasn’t how long he held onto the football, how many sacks he took or anything else he did during the course of any given play. Instead, it was how Williams reacted and carried himself after taking a big hit or watching an important down go bust.
“The stuff they’ve been working on is really how you carry yourself as a franchise quarterback, and the command you have to have to be a franchise QB,” Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated said on the Friday, May 30, edition of The Bill Simmons Podcast. “They watched tape of him taking sacks and how long it took for him to come off the ground. And basically the point they were trying to make to him was last year was a tough year. ‘We understand your offensive coordinator gets fired, then your head coach gets fired, your offensive line wasn’t very good, we get it.’ But if you’re lying on the ground for an extended period of time, you’re not picking yourself up off the ground, that’s gonna resonate with the rest of the team. … You need to be popping up off the ground after hits.”
Bears Have Set Up Caleb Williams to Succeed in Ben Johnson’s First Season as Head Coach
In fairness to Williams, he took as many big shots during his first NFL campaign as anyone in 2024.
Williams sustained 68 sacks during the 17-game regular season, which led the league in that category. Couple that with a 10-game losing streak that struck the Bears after a 4-2 start to the season, and it’s easy to see why it might have been difficult from time to time for Williams to pop up from the turf with which he’d grown so familiar week after defeated week.
However, the Bears have set Williams up for immediate success in 2025, both via the hiring of Johnson and the personnel additions that he’s made alongside the front office since coming aboard.
Bears Stacked Offense Via Trade, Draft, Free Agency
Chicago signed center Drew Dalman in free agency and traded for starting guards Jonah Jackson and Joe Thuney.
The team also drafted tight end Colston Loveland No. 10 overall and slot receiver Luther Burden III with the No. 39 pick in the second round. Both players will likely start and/or play significant snaps during their rookie campaigns alongside wide receivers DJ Moore and Rome Odunze.
Johnson helped turn the Detroit Lions into one of the league’s premier offenses over his three years as their offensive coordinator and elevated Jared Goff into the fringes of the MVP conversation in 2024.
If he can repeat any of that success with Williams in Chicago during the coming years, the Bears’ future could be very bright indeed.
