Behind the scenes of Chicago's rapid turnaround, Williams reveals proof that their head coach is the ultimate football workaholic.
When the Chicago Bears hired Ben Johnson in January of last year, we knew the road was going to be tough.
Johnson was handed a team that won just five games the season before he arrived. Luckily, they had a lot of promising young talent to work with.
They had the franchise quarterback in place in Caleb Williams, along with a solid receiver room of Rome Odunze and D.J. Moore.
Ryan Poles upgraded the offensive line in the offseason with Joe Thuney, Jonah Jackson and Drew Dalman. He then drafted multiple starters in the 2025 NFL Draft, in Colston Loveland, Luther Burden, Ozzy Trapilo and Kyle Monangai.
Even after improving multiple positions, it took a few weeks for the Bears to earn their first win under Johnson. The team started 0-2 after brutal losses to the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions.
Then, the team beat the Dallas Cowboys, and that's when things really started to take off. When it was all said and done, the Bears reached the playoffs and won the NFC North, something that hadn't been accomplished since the Matt Nagy era.
This kind of transformation didn't happen overnight, and it's clear that Johnson was the right man for the job.
After a recent appearance by Williams on "Pardon My Take," we learned something we already knew about the Bears' head coach.
Williams asked about how many times he meets with Johnson in the offseason and regular season. He shared that during OTAs and minicamp, he met with the head coach at the end of the week.
The quarterback revealed that meetings during the season are every day and can last until almost three hours at the end of the night. After that revelation, it's becoming increasingly obvious just how committed Johnson is to the team.
"Depends on the time of the offseason. So, this past OTAs and minicamp, we end up meeting at the end of the week. Any questions, anything like that, I can obviously always ask him, but we end up meeting at the end of the week, and we go through the whole week, and then kind of preparing for the next week, and then during the season, we meet every day. They could be from 1.5 to 2.5 hours at the end of the night."
Johnson is the kind of person who eats, sleeps, and breathes football. It's just the kind of person the Bears needed at the forefront to pull off this quick rebuild.
Now, the Bears are looking to sustain their success in the second year of his tenure, and things are looking up for the Windy City's team.
