Let’s drop our perpetual skepticism and call it like it apparently is: The Bears won the job-search derby and got the hottest head-coaching prospect on the planet, 38-year-old former Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson.
A reported math whiz who likely sees formations and blocking schemes as so many blips on a computer screen, Johnson was coveted for his creativity by a host of NFL teams, notably the Jaguars, Patriots (who hired Mike Vrabel) and Raiders. But Raiders oddball owner Mark Davis and TV analyst/co-owner Tom Brady, with all that new hair and teeth, might have frightened him away.
Oh, and the fact the Raiders don’t have a quarterback worth a damn had to be a factor, too. A big one. What the Bears offered Johnson, above all, was Caleb Williams.
It’s the surest sign of hope for this miserable team, the awareness that Johnson took the Bears’ job knowing full well what he’s getting into. Simply put, the Bears destroy quarterbacks and head coaches the way Orkin destroys crawling pests. It’s the world of the McCaskeys, and it has been a bad one for many years.
But things can change. If we didn’t believe that, we’d still be smoking cigarettes in restaurants and dialing big telephones. Apparently, occasionally Scrooge-like chairman George McCaskey loosened the purse strings and gave Johnson a hefty contract. So that’s nice.
Indeed, it would seem nobody would want to change the Bears’ culture of losing — don’t forget those 10 losses in a row this season — more than the McCaskey clan, which has controlled the franchise going back to founder George Halas. It can’t be fun walking around town and always getting the stink-eye from folks, you know.
Also on the bright side, we know that Johnson reportedly turned down interviews with a number of teams last year, deciding to stay with the Lions and pursue the Super Bowl. That dream got derailed by a lot of stuff this season, mainly injuries, but Johnson’s expertise was on full display. His quarterback, retread Jared Goff, put up dazzling passing numbers, and the Lions’ offense was considered the best in the league. The Lions averaged a league-high 29 points the last three seasons with Johnson leading the offense. The Bears’ offense? Don’t ask.
But we’re all about optimism now, so think of what the Bears have moving forward: a No. 1 overall pick in Williams, a solid group of pass-catchers in DJ Moore, Keenan Allen, Rome Odunze and Cole Kmet, a fairly decent defense, a stable front office, a nice practice facility and a cool history going back to George Trafton, Dick Butkus, Gale Sayers and Walter Payton.
But an offensive line? Uh, no. And one thing Johnson had with the Lions was a first-rate O-line. A lot of those finesse plays and trick plays that worked for Goff might not work so well when Williams is running for his life two seconds after the snap. The difference between a great play and a lousy one is execution because almost every play is designed, done perfectly, to go for a touchdown.
Johnson ran some real beauts against the Bears this season. But if the Bears had run those same plays, well, you have doubts. There was much anger and disgust Oct. 27 after the Bears handed the ball to 300-pound backup center Doug Kramer at the goal line against the Commanders, trailing 12-7, and somehow the exchange between Williams and Kramer busted into a lost fumble.
Almost that exact same play, run by the Bears in 1985 with 320-pound defensive tackle William ‘‘The Refrigerator’’ Perry blasting over the goal line, was acknowledged as genius. The difference? No fumble.
We’ll hope Johnson can handle those details, which maybe have to do with focused practice, with discipline, with culture, with the evil football gods. It has been so long since the Bears were a force, we just don’t know what to think.
Word is Johnson is a stickler for detail. If the guy, at age 14, got a perfect score on the Mathematical Association of America’s AMC 8 exam, which he reportedly did, and majored in math and computer science in college, which he did, he might be up for this new role. But he never has been a head coach. And he never has been a Bear.
Then again, he never has lost a game as a head coach, either. So it’s a happy day.