Bears' season of common sense under coach Ben Johnson continues with 31-28 win over Steelers

For all the flashes and flourishes the Bears signed up for when they hired Ben Johnson as coach, it’s his common sense that has stood out the most in what is turning out to be a marvelous first season.

He has benefitted from occasional good fortune, no doubt, but the best thing about Johnson this season is he always seems to have a sound answer amid an endless barrage of questions. The Bears are smarter since bringing him into their building, and in their 31-28 win over the Steelers he showed all the qualities they’ve been missing from their head coaches lately.

He kept running the ball, even when it wasn’t working, and eventually it opened up.

He kept scheming players open with his calls, giving quarterback Caleb Williams ample opportunities to come through and leaving him margin for an imperfect performance to be sufficient.

He kept coming up with good ideas on third downs, where most games are won or lost.

It wasn’t about gimmicks and magic tricks. It was about knowing what to do.

“I just feel the flow of the game sometimes,” said Johnson, who mentioned that radio play-by-play man Jeff Joniak informed him the Bears passed 18 times in a row near the middle of the game. “I don’t think of those things in the moment. I just kind of [think], ‘What do I feel like is going to work best next?’”

It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

Matt Nagy struggled to find a playing style that fit Mitch Trubisky or Justin Fields, couldn’t establish a consistent rushing attack and was unable to get wide receivers on track.

Johnson has connected with Williams in a way that has led to modest improvement — with much, much more needed — stuck with the run even while navigating limitations in personnel and brought the best out of young receivers Rome Odunze and Luther Burden. And by fixing many of the problems around Williams, Johnson has created leeway for him as he develops.

Matt Eberflus could never hire the right offensive coordinator or intervene himself, was only somewhat effective as a problem solver on his own side of the ball and was very unreliable as a game manager. Johnson has checked all three of those boxes.

There was no chance, for example, that he was going to burn a timeout late in the fourth quarter of a tight game to bail Williams out of a delay-of-game penalty on third-and-eight.

“Those guys know I’m not going to call my timeouts because we’re going to need those later,” Johnson said.

It was hard for anyone to guess what would happen with timeouts last season.

Nagy and other coaches seemingly have thrown their hands up on third-and-long, but that’s when Johnson tends to be at his best. It’s the on-field version of what he constantly says about resilience.

The Bears have converted 42.2% of their third downs this season, which is top-10 in the NFL and would be their best mark since 2015. They went 7-for-13 against the Steelers and cleaned up one of those misses by picking up a fourth-and-one on Williams’ eight-yard scramble in the second quarter.

Johnson schemed a play that cleared the middle of the field by sending DJ Moore from right to left and set up tight end Colston Loveland one-on-one with inside leverage against a defensive back on a third-and-five at the STeelers' 12-yard line in the second quarter. Williams hit him for a touchdown.

On another third-and-five later that quarter, Johnson sent three receivers deep, prompting the Steelers’ defense to backpedal, but had Burden break off his route into the open space underneath for a 10-yard completion.

A few plays later, on third-and-nine, he drew up a downfield screen for Burden that got him the ball with four blockers ahead of him as he raced for 19 yards and put the Bears in reach of a crucial field goal to pull within 21-17 just before halftime.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s deputy, defensive coordinator Dennis Allen, found a way to hold the Steelers to just 21 points — they scored seven on Williams’ fumble in his own end zone in the second quarter — despite playing without five would-be starters. The Bears kept taking hits throughout the game, too, as cornerback Tyrique Stevenson and linebacker Ruben Hyppolite got hurt.

Even as everyone, including Johnson and Williams, sees that this isn’t clicking at full capacity yet, there’s a better overall sense of preparedness than the Bears have had in years.

It’s not surprising that it’s translated to their best season in years.

With eight wins, Johnson has more than Eberflus ever got in a season and more than any Nagy season after going 12-4 in his debut. The Bears are on the brink of securing their first winning season since 2018, which would end the fourth-longest active drought in the league. There’s no question the organization has taken a step forward, it’s only a question of how big.

The Bears sit atop the NFC North and in prime playoff position, and while it’ll be difficult to keep their grip on that as they take on a brutal home stretch, they’re virtually assured of being in the race all the way to the end of the season.

They’ve had plenty of empty Novembers, Decembers and Januaries over the last several seasons. Welcome back to relevance and respectability. All it took to get there was finally finding a coach who was ready for the job.