Ben Johnson brings magic back to Soldier Field as Bears roll Cowboys 31-14, Caleb Williams throws 4 TD passes

This is what the Bears signed up for when they hired Ben Johnson.

Finally, after two dreary, discouraging losses to begin the season, Johnson got his first victory as a head coach Sunday with a 31-14 win over the Cowboys. It also was the first time the Bears won at Soldier Field in almost a calendar year.

The excitement was back in the stadium for the first time in a long time, and Johnson dazzled fans with creativity they hadn’t seen since last December when he was the Lions’ offensive coordinator and hit the Bears with the infamous “Stumblebum” play as he launched his candidacy for their head-coaching vacancy.

There was a good chance this would be a shootout, and Johnson was ready for it.

Late in the first quarter, he called a flea-flicker from his own 35-yard line and caught the Cowboys by surprise. Even with a little too much lift on running back D’Andre Swift’s pitch back to quarterback Caleb Williams, Williams fired the ball with a quick release and had Luther Burden wide open up the left sideline for a touchdown.

It was a brilliant idea, executed brilliantly.

As Swift turned back toward Williams, 10 of the 11 defenders had bitten on it being a run play, leaving only safety Malik Hooker deep. Tight end Cole Kmet and wide receiver Olamide Zaccheaus were open underneath as well, if needed.

One game isn’t nearly enough to cement Johnson’s credibility or even to declare this Bears season on track, but it’s a start. It’s also a win he badly needed. If it felt like this team was in shambles after getting thrashed by the Lions and Johnson ripping the players for poor effort, it would’ve gotten a lot worse with a loss at home to the Cowboys and defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus.

Eberflus coached one of the Bears’ most comedically bad eras and got fired last November with a 14-32 record and a stack of embarrassments. Johnson was brought in to get Williams rolling, but also to straighten out pretty much everything after the tumult under Eberflus.

The flea-flicker was the highlight of the day, and it has probably been seen a bunch, but Johnson did the boring stuff well, too.

Specifically, he showed great feel for the game in the third quarter during a run-heavy drive that ran close to 10 minutes off the clock and gave the Bears’ beleaguered defense a much-needed break.

Beginning with 10:03 left in the third and the Bears up 24-14, they drove from their own 24 for a touchdown on 19 plays — the most on one drive in the NFL this season and the most for the Bears since 2009 — and had a stretch of 11 running plays in a row.

They converted four third downs, and when they arrived at fourth-and-goal from the Cowboys’ 4-yard line, Johnson went for it and Williams buried the Cowboys with a dart to DJ Moore in the center of the end zone with no one near him.

This was the best version of Williams the Bears have seen. He completed 19 of 28 passes for 298 yards with four touchdown passes and no interceptions for a career-high 142.6 passer rating.