PALM BEACH, Fla. — One thing we learned about Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson: he’s a bit of a procrastinator.
Next week, he’ll have his first opportunity to address the players. Teams with new head coaches can begin their offseason training program April 7.
Now it’s Johnson’s turn to think about that opening speech and how he’ll set the tone for what he wants to install at Halas Hall.
“Listen, it’s a different regime. What happened last year was last year. We’re moving on,” he said Tuesday morning at the annual league meeting. “We’re moving past that.”
He knows the message, it just might not be fully written out yet.
“I haven’t totally formulated what that presentation is going to look like quite yet,” he said. “I tend to like to procrastinate just a little bit. That’s where the best work tends to come out. So I’ll figure that out over the weekend.”
Johnson met with reporters for a half hour at the Breakers in Palm Beach and hit on a variety of topics, from quarterback Caleb Williams to cornerback Tyrique Stevenson. Here are our 10 takeaways.
1. Forget turnover ratio. Johnson values EPA above all else.
“The way I understand it right now from our analytics team, the EPA (expected points added) in the passing game is really one of the most critical factors in determining wins and losses right now,” he said.
Five years ago, Johnson would have said turnover margin and takeaways. That’s changed.
“From what I understand, that EPA for the passing game has now surpassed that,” he said. “Whatever team has the higher passing game EPA at the end of the game, they generally win that game over 80 percent of the time. It’s a huge stat. “
Lions had the second-best EPA per pass last season (0.37 per TruMedia), trailing only the Ravens. The Bears ranked 22nd and fell to 28th when it was EPA per dropback.
The highest EPA per pass attempt the Bears have had since 2000 was 0.25 in 2013, which ranked eighth that season.
Johnson said he became more aware of EPA’s importance last year, citing a multiyear study. So how do you improve the passing game’s EPA?
“For me, it is completion percentage,” Johnson said. “Usually when you’re talking about completion percentage, the distance from the line of scrimmage, the completion percentage goes down. If you’re going to emphasize higher completions and shorter throws, that’s where the run after catch for your pass catchers comes into play.”
2. The under-center, play-action game will soon be a bigger part of Williams’ repertoire.
Last month, Williams posted a video to Instagram. He took a seven-step, play-action drop from under center.
That’s going to be part of Williams’ adjustment to the new head coach, as Johnson will see how it works.
“He’s been predominantly a shotgun quarterback for most of his high school and college career, and so he’s very comfortable there,” Johnson said. “We’re going to work to see the comfort level under center and how much of that applies. We had a lot of success where I was last year that going under center for the run game did translate in play action. Whether that works for us in Chicago, time will tell, right?”
The Bears ran only 59 play-action, under-center passes last season. The Lions had a league-high 190 attempts. Williams might not get to that — and if it’s a struggle, Johnson will keep him in the shotgun — but he sees it as an important element to add to Williams’ game.
“He’s done it. It’s just the comfort level. It’s time on task,” he said. “It’s, how many reps can we get under his belt where he feels better and better about taking drops under center? I’m more prone to the play-action game underneath because I do think the longer action, the longer fake, does tend to hold the second level for a little bit longer. That’s where you get your chunks, your shots, behind them. There is merit for looking to develop that part of his game.”
3. Johnson has a variety of ways he can help the team reduce sacks, but it still starts up front.
The most glaring stat from Williams’ rookie season was the sack number: 68. It was too high, and not solely on the offensive line.
Johnson has surely watched every one of them, and his coaching — from play calling to play design to helping general manager Ryan Poles rebuild the offensive line — should help reduce that.
“It takes a village,” he said. “I don’t know what the number was in terms of seconds that he held on to the ball before releasing it. But we would certainly like to bring that number down. Part of that is how well can we can scheme No. 1 or No. 2 in the progression open for him? The protection up front can get better. The route runners get to their spots faster. We can move the pocket a little bit more. There’s a lot of things that we have at our disposal that can help with that process.”
The additions of guard Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson and center Drew Dalman are also paramount to Johnson’s plan.
“We’ve got to protect the quarterback. To me, that’s number one,” he said. “I just talked about how important the passing game metric is in modern football. That’s a huge deal for us, and naturally, those two go hand in hand. If you’re able to protect, generally, you have a good offensive line. If you have a good offensive line, generally, you’re able to run the ball. The backs have a lot to say with that as well. I think those two metrics really do tie together to a degree.”
4. The Bears will be coached hard under Johnson — and running backs coach Eric Bieniemy is an essential part of that philosophy.
“Listen, he’s going to coach the piss out of these running backs now,” Johnson said. “That’s what he does well. So. Everybody who texted me after we hired him — I had probably a half-dozen people who have worked with him in the past — and they said, ‘You just hired the best running backs coach in the NFL.’ So that’s his primary job.”
But he’s more than that. Bieniemy came recommended by general manager Ryan Poles and chief administrative officer Ted Crews, who worked with him in Kansas City. But Johnson said he’s learned that Bieniemy has “a very beautiful offensive mind,” too.
“He has been exposed to that West Coast system for, call it, 20 years,” he said. “So he knows a certain way of doing it and he has been able to apply that. And we have had some really healthy dialogue and good conversations as we’ve been going over tape.”
New Bears coach Ben Johnson has some ideas to help left tackle Braxton Jones improve this year. (Jamie Sabau / USA Today)
5. If the Bears don’t select a left tackle early in the draft, it could be because they’re still high on Braxton Jones and Kiran Amegadjie.
For now, Jones is still the starter. Johnson said he’s on track to return from his broken ankle but that he should be limited in training camp.
“The No. 1 thing, in my opinion, that tackles need to do is pass protect,” Johnson said. “So I think he has the feet to get that done. We’re going to challenge him to maybe gain a little more weight so that he can anchor a little bit better in pass pro. But everything I’ve seen so far has shown a phenomenal athlete out there on the edge that we feel like we can work with.”
Johnson also was high on Amegadjie last year as a draft prospect.
“I liked Kiran a lot coming out last year,” he said. “He was a guy we had earmarked as a potential developmental prospect. He had a lot of traits to work with. I don’t know if the vision last year in Chicago was for him to have to play so quickly. But they were kind of forced into that spot. And so he had some ups and some downs, as you would normally think for a rookie lineman, much less one who you thought would take a little more time to get playing at a high level. We’re not discouraged at all by what he put on tape. He got put into some tough situations last year. And I know (offensive line coach Dan) Roushar has been really, really excited to get to work with him soon.”
6. The Bears’ belief in safety Jaquan Brisker remains steadfast under Johnson — but for how long?
Everything starts with Brisker’s health. He suffered a concussion in Week 5 against the Carolina Panthers and missed the rest of the season but has been cleared to return.
Johnson also said there is room for Brisker to improve on the field, having schemed against him the past few seasons.
“He’s a guy that you’ve got to know where he is,” Johnson said. “You’ve got to account for him. He likes to play down in the box. He likes to get involved. The one thing that I always thought that we could take advantage of was you could get him to have some bad eyes at times. So that’s the one thing we’ll take about, is to make sure he stays sound and he’s playing disciplined football. But he’s got a great skill set. I think he’s a heck of a football player.”
7. The evaluation of cornerback Tyrique Stevenson is just beginning.
Johnson, defensive coordinator Dennis Allen and defensive backs coach/defensive pass coordinator Al Harris have all spoken with Stevenson. In Johnson’s case, the Hail Mary from last season against the Washington Commanders wasn’t part of the conversation.
“I’m just getting to know these guys on a personal level in the offseason,” he said. “We’ll dive into more football once they get into the building.”
But Stevenson is definitely a player to watch after everything that transpired last season for him and the Bears.
“He’s a young player that’s still learning, he’s still growing, he’s still maturing,” Johnson said. “But you see all the athletic traits and you see the potential. That’s always a dangerous word to throw out there, but I’m really encouraged.”
8. Tight end Cole Kmet can play a ‘critical role’ in the offense, and it might come from a variety of spots on the field.
Five years ago, when Kmet was a draft prospect, Johnson remembered saying in Detroit, “This guy’s like a Boy Scout. He’s a guy that you’d want your daughter to marry. He’s that type of guy.”
Now he’s Johnson’s No. 1 tight end, a position we know he values.
“I know he’s going to play a critical role in what we try to do this year,” he said.
What does that look like? Johnson doesn’t want to offer up much until he gets on the field with Kmet. But he already has identified an area of improvement: run blocking, something he said he’s already talked about with Kmet, the team’s longest-tenured player.
As a pass catcher, Johnson sees more potential. Despite career-high marks in catch percentage and yards per target in 2024, Kmet’s production dipped, thanks in part to scattered usage.
“We’re going to put him in a place where he can succeed,” Johnson said. “He’s done some things where, call it branch routes, outbreakers by No. 3 in the formation that have been really impressive, but we might try to move him around to different spots all the way outside the numbers to attached (in-line) and everywhere in between. I’m excited about working with him.”
9. New receivers Zaccheaus and Duvernay caught Johnson’s eye with speed and intangibles.
When the Falcons had Julio Jones, Johnson would notice how the complementary receivers worked, including Olamide Zaccheaus.
“I always admired those Atlanta receivers when Julio was there with how they raged off the football,” Johnson said. “They had the low pad level and they really had a vertical push about them that I didn’t feel many teams in the NFL mimic. He still plays that way.”
It’s quite specific for Johnson to bring up the 2019-20 Falcons receivers, two below-average teams, and before Zaccheaus broke out. But it speaks to the detail in which he studies, and he kept that blocking receiver in mind.
“I’m encouraged to get him in the building because I think nothing helps shape our wide receiver room to where we strike just a little bit more fear in the DBs (than) with how we come off the football,” Johnson said, while also noting Zaccheaus had a career year in Washington last season — 45 catches for 506 yards.
The other receiver addition, Devin Duvernay, upgrades the return game and also brings speed to the room. Johnson emphasized run after catch, a trait he described both players as having at a “pretty high level.”
“(Duvernay’s) got timed speed, might be a little faster. He’s a low-4.4, 4.3 guy,” Johnson said. He’s been up and down, more of a return guy throughout the course of his career. He was with (Bears passing game coordinator) Press Taylor last year in Jacksonville and we’re really encouraged with what we saw on tape.”
10. Don’t worry, there won’t be eight captains under Johnson.
And there won’t be any kind of week-to-week, rotating captains, either. Johnson said he’ll put it to a team vote and they will have three to five captains for the 2025 season.
Last year, the Bears had eight captains, a number that might not have mattered had the team not completely collapsed. Johnson’s sticking to a more conventional number and will keep the same group for the full season.
(Top photo: Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)
