Following a breakthrough 2025 season, Bears quarterback Caleb Williams credits his partnership with Ben Johnson for bringing excitement to the Chicago Bears.
Ben Johnson brought back the fun in football for Caleb Williams.
After a rookie season that featured a 10-game losing streak and a league-high 68 sacks, Williams experienced both individual and team success in the NFL under his head coach and offensive play caller.
The Bears were one of the most explosive offenses in football. Williams' 2025 season is stacked with highlight after highlight and six fourth-quarter game-winning drives. The Bears won 11 games and clinched the NFC North for the first time since 2018.
And, of course, the comeback victories against the Green Bay Packers in Week 16 and the wild-card round will never be forgotten. Most Bears fans would say last year was a lot of fun.
But Williams shared on the Up & Adams Show with Kay Adams that he is having even more fun right now, anticipating more entertainment from his team throughout entire games this upcoming season.
"You can feel it," Williams said. "You can see it. The confidence it's not thinking, it's what goes on outside, it's what goes on the grass that you can see you can feel the connection, the momentum. Whether it's offense or defense. I'm not speaking about my side of the ball or special teams. It's all three of us combined. You know, the connection in the locker rooms all of that, so we got some good things cooking and we got to keep growing. We gotta keep going, but it's fireworks. And all that's going to be, you know, lighting up here in Chicago, and we're excited to get it going."
This sense of excitement doesn't come out of nowhere. With Johnson leading the team, every imperfection is identified and evaluated -- like when he sat down with Williams to watch every incompletion from last year.
"We sit down and we go through it," Williams said. "We figure out, was it [the ball] catchable? Was it not? Is there anything I can do better to help the receivers? Obviously, there's times where guys just drop the ball, but more often than not, it's looking inward and starting with myself and then, you know, going from there. It's finding ways through practice, finding ways through individual drills, finding ways through offseason to get better and work my tail off to, you know, build confidence working on the plays mentally and things like that, you know, in the offseason.
So when it gets to the season, into training camp, and things like that, I'm not thinking, I'm not late to stuff. My feet are all timed up and I'm delivering a catchable ball to the guys, and they can go make plays with the ball in their hand."
After the Bears finished minicamp and were set to leave for summer break, Johnson asked Williams if he needed anything from him to be better. He told Johnson to keep pushing him and the Bears' head coach assured his quarterback he wouldn't have to worry about that.
"So, we're going to keep going, we're going to keep pushing, we're going to keep finding ways to get better to be able to win games from September to February," Williams said.
