The Chicago Bears have gone through a major overhaul in the 2025 offseason. Ben Johnson was hired as the team’s head coach, and GM Ryan Poles has shaped the roster to fit his coach’s needs.
The Bears quickly hired Johnson after the Detroit Lions lost in the Divisional Round. A recent report from The Athletic highlighted how badly the team wanted Johnson and how confident the coach is heading into 2025.
Ben Johnson Called Out NFC North Rivals Upon Arrival in Chicago
Johnson joins the Bears after three years as the offensive coordinator for the Detroit Lions. He turned a lackluster offense into one of the NFL’s best and helped Detroit win nine or more games each of his three years on the job. Sustained success does not happen often for the Lions, but Johnson’s offense led the team to back-to-back NFC North Titles the last two seasons.
Outside of George Halas and Mike Ditka, the Bears have had a colorful head coaching history in the team’s 105 seasons. Matt Eberflus was fired mid-way through his third season, and Chicago needed an offensive mind to mold its young quarterback.
The Athletic’s Adam Jahns recently wrote an article about how Johnson became Chicago’s head coach. Bears’ Chairman George McCaskey and team president Kevin Warren were interviewed about the hiring process. Poles set up an extremely detail-oriented process, which was compared to writing scouting reports by the two executives.
“We wrote up reports,” Warren said. “It was almost like how he prepares for free agency and how he prepares for the draft. So it wasn’t like coming in there, ‘Hey, what’d you think about Candidate A?’ … ‘Oh, I like him.’ No, no, no, no. It was broken down into different categories about areas of that candidate and why it would make it important and why it would be relevant.”
Jahns then focused on how Johnson interviewed and what stood out to McCaskey and Warren. He wrote, “Those were the first words out of his mouth on the Zoom,” McCaskey said. “And that was the last thing he said. He said, ‘Did I mention to you that I want this job?’ — right before we turned off the camera.”
Jahns noted how McCaskey felt about Johnson’s authenticity in wanting the Bears job: “Anytime there’s a process like this, you hear all these crazy stories, and you don’t know their origins,” McCaskey said. “You don’t know who’s planting them. You have serious doubts about their authenticity. And for the guy to say, ‘Contrary to what you might have heard, I want to work with Ryan — and I want to be the next head coach of the Chicago Bears.’”
McCaskey relayed Johnson’s message of “I want that smoke” to the NFC North teams. Johnson led the best offense in the league, according to PFSN’s Offense+ metric. The Lions finished first in points (564), second in passing yards (4,474), sixth in rushing yards (2,488), and first in points scored per drive (3.04).
Johnson built a machine in Detroit that dominated the NFC North over the last two seasons. He’ll now try to turn a disappointing Bears team into a machine while playing those same divisional opponents. 2025 will be interesting in the NFC North.