Courtney Cronin
CHICAGO — Standing in his Soldier Area suite on Dec. 22, 2024, Chicago Bears basic supervisor Ryan Poles felt blended feelings as he watched the Detroit Lions rating their remaining landing in a 34-17 rout.
On one hand, dropping to a division rival whereas within the midst of a 10-game dropping streak in a stadium stuffed with followers cheering on the guests, stung. Loads.
However there was one thing about this play that tempered Poles' frustration.
The notorious play often known as “Stumble Bum” was the brainchild of offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. The play started with quarterback Jared Goff taking the snap and faking a stumble as he dropped again. Working again Jahmyr Gibbs dove to the bottom as if attempting to recuperate a fumble. After Bears defenders bit on the pretend, Goff delivered a 21-yard landing go to tight finish Sam LaPorta with 12:18 to play within the third quarter.
Poles seemed to the Lions sideline, the place gamers and coaches exploded with pleasure.
“You are undoubtedly annoyed within the second,” Poles mentioned. “You are feeling like somebody's kicking you whilst you're down.
“On the similar time, I admired the creativity and execution of it.”
He wasn't the one member of the Bears' brass who felt that manner.
“Fooled me,” Bears chairman George H. McCaskey mentioned. “I used to be like, ‘Hey, the quarterback's on the bottom.'”
Johnson was already a high goal of the Bears' head teaching search by that time. Thomas Brown was ending the season because the Bears' interim coach, and this second exemplified the kind of creativity and boldness the Bears wished of their subsequent playcaller.
However Johnson's uniqueness extends past trick performs. Those that know the coach's son bear in mind him diagramming performs as a child whereas pretending to be Joe Montana, spending complete nights within the workplace as a Miami Dolphins high quality management coach and studying prolonged passages from a guide about attaining targets within the army whereas standing in entrance of a packed room. He is an innovator and a borderline cocky competitor who would not thoughts taking a playful jab at an opposing coach. And now he is tasked with growing a franchise quarterback in a metropolis that hasn't had one in 80 years and guiding a staff to its first playoff win because the 2010 season.
Because the Bears open each their 2025 season and the Ben Johnson period Monday night time vs. the Minnesota Vikings (8:15 p.m. ET, ESPN), it will likely be a end result of what could be described as a lifetime of preparation for this second.
“You guys simply watch, we acquired a superb head coach,” Bears particular groups coordinator Richard Hightower mentioned. “I have been round numerous them. Rattling good. Particular.”
SOME OF JOHNSON'S earliest reminiscences are related to numbers. He can nonetheless recite the rhythmic cadence his mom, Gail, used to assist his older sister, Kasey, bear in mind multiplication tables whereas they drove to highschool.
6 instances 6 is 36 …
Math got here simple and piqued Johnson's curiosity from a younger age. When he was in kindergarten, his dad and mom purchased him a spiral pocket book to permit his thoughts and organizational abilities to go to work. Every day after college, the 6-year-old wrote out numbers from 1 to 10,000 — for enjoyable. When one web page crammed up, he'd be on to the following, till the pocket book was full of each quantity in sequential order in neat columns.
“It wasn't addition or subtraction or any of that sort of stuff, however he went by means of the numbers and made certain he had all of them proper,” mentioned Ben's father, Don, who was a highschool principal in addition to a soccer coach. “He actually did get to be a fairly vivid child by way of the totally different math qualities.”
As a middle-schooler in Asheville, North Carolina, Johnson's love for math grew alongside along with his ardour for soccer. He turned concerned with MathCounts, a nationwide collection of in-person math competitions.
“In between checks I took the remainder of the [math] staff out to the soccer area and we threw the ball round,” Johnson mentioned. “[Math] wasn't one thing I actually labored at. It was simply that I used to be good at it, however that wasn't actually the place my coronary heart was.”
JOHNSON'S FOOTBALL BIO on the College of North Carolina, the place he walked on as a quarterback from 2004 to 2006, lists quite a few athletic and educational achievements from his days at A.C. Reynolds Excessive College in Asheville. He was the convention participant of the yr as a senior quarterback after main the Rockets to a 4A state championship in 2002. He ran observe and completed among the many high 5 in his class academically.
There's additionally a enjoyable proven fact that speaks to Johnson's earliest influences: “Pretended to be Joe Montana as a child.”
Don Johnson all the time had the San Francisco 49ers on tv when his kids, Kasey, Ben and Kyle, have been rising up. A former offensive coordinator at The Citadel from 1983 to 1985 and later a highschool soccer coach, Don observed Ben choosing up on small particulars that he would hear the announcers dissect on TV.
“He understood the sport so much higher than most youngsters his age,” Don mentioned.
Round center college, Ben started demonstrating his personal creativity. He'd diagram formations, draw up methods he'd envision the offense scoring and take his concepts to his father for suggestions.
“And numerous it comes again to Joe Montana, as a result of [Ben] would see a tv program about Invoice Walsh and Joe Montana, and they'd present a few of the performs that they've drawn up,” Don Johnson mentioned. “He noticed how these performs have been diagrammed, and people have been issues that he thought he might purchase into.”
Nearly all of Ben Johnson's highschool soccer profession was spent in a break up again, I-formation offense predicated on operating the ball. It wasn't till his senior yr in 2003 that his former quarterbacks coach Steve McCurry took over head teaching duties and the Rockets started to broaden their playbook.
Johnson had a robust understanding of his position within the offense, which allowed McCurry to dial up extra go performs for his quarterback. It quickly turned a ability that his coaches would lean on in video games.
“He is so cerebral and so good, he might inform the offensive linemen who to dam, inform the operating again the place he must go, inform the receivers what routes to run,” McCurry mentioned. “Once we had timeouts and had our conferences on the sideline, I all the time listened to him, our offensive coordinator listened to him, we relied closely on him to inform us — what are they doing right here? What do we have to do?
“If I knew what I do know now, I'd've let him name the performs for us, be a player-coach on the sphere.”
AFTER TWO SEASONS as a graduate assistant and one yr because the tight ends coach at Boston School, Johnson acquired his first shot within the NFL as an offensive assistant with the Dolphins in 2012.
Mike Sherman, the Dolphins offensive coordinator (2012-13), demanded numerous Johnson, whose first gig within the professionals referred to as upon him to place Miami's playbook collectively. Having the perfect playbook within the NFL was one thing Sherman prided himself on, and it went far past the complexity of every play and formation. Accessibility and with the ability to name up a menu of specifics within the Dolphins' digital system would enable coaches to see how performs might be used to counter numerous defenses.
Sherman would draw an summary of every play, and Johnson was accountable for placing pencil to paper and getting each element and nuance of the play drawn. He then manually inputted this info into the Dolphins' system. This course of took hours.
“He might draw some nice photos,” Sherman mentioned. “One factor that I can say about him, the man has unbelievable endurance. That is what he impressed on me probably the most was his means to work and simply grind it, grind it, grind it. There have been instances that I'd've gone dwelling at 2 o'clock within the morning, roll round, come on again in about 5:30 and he is nonetheless engaged on the images. He is aware of they must be precisely proper, so he was any individual that when he acquired the guide to do the images, I knew it was going to get carried out and be on my desk once I get in within the morning. And he was adamant about getting these photos carried out and doing a superb job, and he did an unbelievable job.
“The longer I took handy over the purple zone, the third downs, the quick yardage, the later he needed to keep. And he by no means complained one time. I might come within the morning, he'd have these droopy canine eyes and he would not say a lot, however the photos can be on my desk, that is for certain.”
JOHNSON'S SISTER, KASEY King, knew the inevitable was coming. The Dolphins had struggled by means of back-to-back dropping seasons and fired their teaching workers following the 2018 season. That meant that Johnson, who had spent eight seasons with Miami, together with the final because the large receivers coach, was with out a job.
King texted her brother and let him know {that a} bottle of bourbon was being delivered that day.
“There's nothing you'll be able to say or try this's going to make anyone really feel higher,” King mentioned. “The man likes to work, and he likes to maintain his thoughts going.
“For him, that was simply fairly painful to simply not have the following process.”
Johnson and his household stayed in South Florida whereas he volunteered in a non-coaching capability at FIU, the school program headed by his former UNC coach Butch Davis. On the final minute, a proposal from former Lions coach Matt Patricia got here by means of for Johnson to get again within the NFL as an offensive high quality management coach for the 2019 season.
“I simply bear in mind telling him, Ben, you bought to discover a option to make this work,” Joe Philbin, the previous Dolphins head coach who employed Johnson in 2012, mentioned. “They'll see the standard of coach you might be, and you will find a option to make it work.”
The job was a step again from being a place coach, however it might function a launching level for Johnson's profession.
“The humbling half was being on the road and seeing the NFL offseason and coaching camp transfer on with out you,” Johnson mentioned. “It wasn't humbling for me to go to Detroit and take a decrease place. I used to be getting there proper on the finish of coaching camp, and gamers and coaches alike have been somewhat bit drained. That they had gone 4 to 5 weeks, nonstop. And now who's this younger man coming in with an enormous smile on his face on a regular basis?
“When soccer will get taken away from you and also you get it again lastly, it would not matter what position you are in, you are going to respect each second of it.”
Johnson labored his manner again into the place coach ranks with Detroit's tight ends the next yr and have become the staff's passing recreation coordinator in 2021, when he was retained by Dan Campbell after Patricia's firing. Campbell knew Johnson from their time in Miami and discovered simply how a lot he might lean on him.
When Campbell demoted former offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn in mid-November 2021 after the Lions' 0-8 begin, he enlisted Johnson's assist in calling performs.
Whereas making ready to play the Lions on Dec. 26, former Atlanta Falcons coach Arthur Smith observed refined variations that confirmed up on movie. The Lions have been a two-win staff at that time and in line for a excessive draft decide, however the playcalls have been nonetheless designed to place gamers in place to achieve success. The creativity on third down was there. So was the best way Detroit used its tight ends.
Smith, who performed with Johnson at North Carolina, confirmed his findings along with his former teammate earlier than kickoff.
“It seemed totally different when that swap happened,” Smith mentioned. “It was very sensible what they did to attempt to win these video games late within the yr.”
The next season, Campbell promoted Johnson to offensive coordinator, the place he held from 2022 by means of 2024 whereas growing one of many NFL's most explosive offenses. And though he acquired onto the radar of the Bears and quite a few different groups due to the creativity his models displayed, what stood out greater than scheme and trick performs was the buy-in from gamers that confirmed up from play to play.
“I believe his educating ability, to me, I see that on the movie greater than some mad scientist,” Philbin mentioned. “I consider soccer as an execution recreation, as an effort recreation, a basic recreation. Once I watch his tape, that is what actually impresses me, and that is a credit score to him and his workers.”
HARRISON FREID, WHO is in his fourth season as Bears director of analysis and analytics, estimates he has sat by means of upward of three,000 staff conferences over 10 seasons within the NFL. What he witnessed Johnson do to seize his staff's consideration earlier than observe on Aug. 20 is one thing he'd by no means seen earlier than.
For 9 minutes, Johnson learn from the guide “Goal Safe” by Nick Lavery, an active-duty member of the Inexperienced Berets whose software of a warrior mindset extends past the army to private achievements.
Greater than 150 gamers, coaches and staffers packed into the staff's auditorium at Halas Corridor because the 39-year-old thumbed by means of pages that spoke to working by means of obstacles even after they really feel insurmountable.
“I've by no means seen a coach try this,” Freid mentioned. “Studying in public is one thing that takes an incredible quantity of confidence to actually arise in entrance of individuals.
“He does issues otherwise. He does issues with numerous confidence, and I believe he does issues with a imaginative and prescient of why he is doing it. It is not simply he is doing it to do it.”
That is what Bears gamers have come to study their head coach. Late in Chicago's 38-0 preseason win over Buffalo, cameras caught a stern-looking Johnson on the sideline as his staff continued to hold factors on the Payments. Johnson had handed playcalling duties to offensive coordinator Declan Doyle for the second half however remained glued to the motion as if his staff have been preventing to return again.
“He has this demeanor to him earlier than a recreation that is somewhat totally different from whenever you see him in observe,” Bears tight finish Cole Kmet mentioned. “You possibly can inform he is getting game-day prepared, that is for certain.
“That is cool to see, to have that depth from a playcaller and out of your head coach is numerous enjoyable to play with.”
That intense focus is one thing Johnson tried to instill in his gamers by ensuring they mastered the small particulars first. Periods all through the spring and summer season included extra reps throughout drills when the execution wasn't as much as Johnson's commonplace. That has included everybody, significantly quarterback Caleb Williams, getting referred to as out in entrance of the staff when repeated errors popped up.
“He'll stand up on the board, he'll say it out loud, he'll clarify it to a deeper stage,” Williams mentioned. “He coaches. He helps you be taught.
“It has been superior to have the ability to have that after which have any individual go on the market and push you.”
Johnson is aware of the best way to push buttons. He did it throughout his introductory information convention with the Bears, when he mentioned how a lot he loved beating Inexperienced Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur twice a season. No person ever accused Johnson of being too modest.
It is one thing that rubbed off on him throughout his time with Campbell.
“What I discovered most over the past 4 years truly got here final yr, and that was the best way to deal with the excessive expectations,” Johnson mentioned. “And I in all probability initially would've thought, ‘Hey, downplay these and simply give attention to the primary factor, give attention to the following observe or the following recreation.'
“Whereas Dan actually embraced them and mentioned, ‘Come on in, we do have the goal on our again.' And it was cool to see how the gamers responded to it, as a result of I believed they dealt with it very well. It wasn't a lot downplay and be humble about it, no, it is, ‘Hey, yeah, we're the massive canines' and ‘Come and get us.'”
The Bears do not have the goal but. ESPN BET picks them to complete fourth within the division, however that does not cease Johnson from conveying confidence. It is a confidence that's primarily based on a lifetime of preparation.
“It is a positive line,” Johnson mentioned. “At instances you would possibly overstep it, and it would come throughout as smug or cocky, however I'd relatively try this than be not sure or play gradual or be unconfident.
“It is a balancing act, and it is a enjoyable factor to navigate.”
