It’s been said that teams often take on the personality of their head coach.
As the Bears begin Phase 2 of their voluntary offseason program with a minicamp this week at Halas Hall, it appears that’s exactly what’s transpiring with Ben Johnson.
Players are learning that their first-year coach exudes energy and excitement and believes strongly in accountability and attention to detail.
I think he coaches and lives his life like he has a chip on his shoulder,” said offensive coordinator Declan Doyle. “His daily action rubs off on everybody else. His coaching philosophy is really similar to that. He’s not going to let you slide. He’s not going to walk past something. He’s going to make sure you know.
“When a quarterback is calling a play and he misspeaks, we’re starting over. The biggest thing is that he’s not asking you to do anything that he’s not doing, but he’s going to uphold that standard regardless. There is no detail too small that isn’t important.
Tight ends coach Jim Dray described Johnson as “very passionate, very direct and very knowledgeable about what he wants to do and how he wants to do it.”
Johnson’s take-no-prisoners attitude is infiltrating the entire roster.
He doesn’t just want to win, we want to win by a lot,” linebacker Tremaine Edmunds said earlier this month. “We want to dominate. That’s important. That just talks about his mentality, talks about his mindset. It’s like, ‘We’re going to be the best we’re going to be. We want to dominate, and we want our opponent to feel that for sure.'”
That’s certainly how defenses felt that faced the Lions offense that Johnson coordinated the past three seasons. During that span, Detroit scored a league-high 28.2 points per game.
Doyle believes that Johnson’s meticulous approach “trickles down to the whole offense.”
The scheme, every single thing is detailed out,” Doyle said. “These are the exact expectations. This is exactly how we’re going to ask our back to read this play, how we’re going to ask our right guard to communicate this play. This is the technique we’re going to use. Every single thing is detailed out. There is no ambiguity.
Johnson is renowned for his creativity and trick plays, but that’s not what fuels his success.
“I think the secret sauce is really in the fundamentals and the attention to detail,” said Bears passing game coordinator Press Taylor. “And once you’re there and everybody understands what that looks like, what that is, it’s not as big of a deal inside the building to be this creative force.”
During his introductory press conference in January, Johnson vowed not to just bring his Lions playbook with him to Chicago but to formulate a new system that’s calibrated with second-year quarterback Caleb Williams in mind.
“We’re ripping this thing down to the studs and we’re going to build it up with him first and foremost,” Johnson said at the time.
The Bears coach and his staff are currently in the midst of that process at Halas Hall.
“We stripped it all down,” Doyle said. “Ben talked about going to the bare bones. Like, ‘How are we going to speak? What’s the language we’re going to use?’ And getting everybody on the same page as far as that goes from an offensive standpoint.
“It’s going to be a long time before we finalize [and say], ‘This is exactly what the scheme will look like in Game 1.’ We really want to just lay the foundation, introduce these guys to a lot of the scheme, see what they can handle. We want it to be stressful early. And then from there we’re going to shape it to fit our players the best … Ben is very much into being able to morph the offense to fit the player. And that’s really the plan here moving forward.”
