There was no single visionary who discovered Ben Johnson and predicted his rise to become one of the NFL’s most coveted coaches. Everyone saw it coming.
Johnson signed on as the Bears’ new head coach Tuesday after three seasons of piling up points as Lions offensive coordinator, and the team will introduce him at a news conference at Halas Hall on Wednesday. In conversations with those who worked with Johnson as he climbed through Boston College, the Dolphins and the Lions, the consensus was that he clearly was headed to a job like this.
It was hardly profound to hear coaches call Johnson a savvy tactician. What stood out was when accomplished play callers willingly admitted he’s better than them.
He’s smarter. He’s quicker. He’s bolder.
“I haven’t seen one better than this kid,” said former coach Mike Martz, who ran the Rams’ offense when they were The Greatest Show on Turf and was the Bears’ offensive coordinator in 2010 and ’11. “I’m excited for Chicago because they really got this one right. You see Sean McVay and those guys — he’s at their level as a play caller.
“You just have to have a feel for play calling… You have to be one play ahead of everybody else, and he’s done that as well as anybody I’ve ever seen.”
Johnson’s starting point on developing that skill was playing quarterback as a walk-on at North Carolina, where he became enamored with John Shoop’s offense.
Johnson tweaked and added along the way as he compiled what eventually would be his offense. Martz was a huge influence from afar, though they never worked together. He picked up elements of the West Coast offense as a graduate assistant at Boston College under Kevin Rogers and as an assistant to Darrell Bevell in Detroit.
He gleaned more of Martz’ philosophy, as well as that of the offense the Colts and Broncos built around Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning, from Adam Gase and Clyde Christensen with the Dolphins.
Shoop, also a Bears offensive coordinator from 2001 through ’03, shaped Johnson’s overarching theory with the phrase, “We want the same things to look different, and different things to look the same.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard another coach say those same words since,” Johnson said of Shoop’s motto in an interview with the Detroit News. “It’s always resonated with me.”
That’s what he’ll want to establish as the Bears’ offensive identity. The idea is to be unpredictable by showing the defense a familiar formation, then deploying something unexpected — or line up in an exotic formation that puts the opposition on high alert, only to pivot to a bread-and-butter play.
Johnson, 38, got his start in coaching at Boston College, which is general manager Ryan Poles’ alma mater, and spent three seasons there before Dolphins coach Joe Philbin hired him in 2012.
Johnson survived the coaching change when the Dolphins fired Philbin and replaced him with Gase in 2016. In between, future Lions coach Dan Campbell had a stint as interim coach and promoted Johnson to tight ends coach. In the offseason, former executive Mike Tannenbaum recommended that Gase and Christensen consider keeping Johnson, and both saw major potential in him at 29.
“That wasn’t surprising,” said former Dolphins offensive line coach Jim Turner. “In Miami, people would always say he was the smartest guy in the room. And it was true.
“He played quarterback, and they naturally have a big-picture look at things. Plus, he was an undersized guy to be playing Division I, so he obviously had to have some mental capacity that allowed him to overcome his size.”
Martz noticed that, too, when they finally met. Gase invited him to Dolphins training camp for a week or so, and once Johnson got to sit down with him, he was armed with video clips of Martz’ offense and had relentless questions.
“Guys do that over the years, but his questions were better than everybody else’s,” Martz said. “He wanted to know exactly how you were teaching this. He was building his book of offense.”
When people rave about Johnson’s intelligence, they aren’t exaggerating. He graduated with degrees in mathematics and computer science from North Carolina, worked briefly as a computer programmer and in 2012 created software to simplify how coaches show footage of game situations in meetings.
When the Dolphins cleaned house again at the end of the 2018 season, Johnson landed with the Lions as a quality control coach under Matt Patricia. They fired Patricia in 2020, but it worked out fine for Johnson when they hired his old pal Campbell.
Campbell kept him as tight ends coach and passing-game coordinator under offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn for 2021, then promoted him to offensive coordinator in ’22. That’s when everyone saw Johnson open his “book,” years in the making, and it materializes into one of the NFL’s most explosive offenses.
In his first season as coordinator, the Lions jumped from 25th to fifth in scoring, then finished fifth the next season and first this season at 33.2 points per game — the NFL’s highest average since the 2019 Ravens. He helped vault quarterback Jared Goff from good to great. He was crucial to their climb from 3-13-1 in 2021 to championship contention.
And even at the end, when the Lions lost 45-31 to the Commanders on Saturday, Johnson kept the defense guessing with trick plays. Not all of them were great, like when wide receiver Jameson Williams threw an interception, but there were some gems like David Montgomery’s pitch-turned-shovel-pass that went for 20 yards.
“We’ve all got our trick plays, but the best coaches call them at the right time,” said Christensen, a former coordinator for the Buccaneers and Colts. “Ben has a knack for it. A lot of us are just pedestrian at it, but some guys are special.”
Timing is everything, and coaches who worked with Johnson repeatedly mentioned his uncanny feel for the game.
Defenses frequently throw surprises at an offense, and a delay in the offensive play caller deciphering it can be dangerous. The Bears saw that with former coach Matt Nagy and offensive coordinators Luke Getsy and Shane Waldron. Sometimes it takes play callers too long to respond, or they simply don’t.
“The thing he does so well as a play caller is he’s quick to adjust,” said one coach who was on staff with Johnson. “They’ll throw all kinds of different looks at him, and he adjusts immediately. He always comes up with an answer.
“A lot of play callers think they see something a defense is doing, but it takes them a series or two to be sure and react. Not him. He doesn’t [mess] around and wait.”
The Bears’ offense has been messing around for years, and they’re hoping Johnson can not only change that but streamline an entire organization that has been meandering under struggling coaches. They’re counting on him to make them everything they’ve failed to be: smart, quick and bold.