PHOENIX — It’s late March, the NFL draft is fast approaching, and Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson is trying to make up for lost time. He’s got a demanding trio who are holding him accountable.

“I’m trying to win that Father of the Year Award still, even though I miss half the year (coaching),” Johnson told the Chicago Tribune during the NFL annual meetings Monday. “I’ve gone to a few of my son’s (6-year-old Kennedy’s) basketball games, excited for baseball to start up for him soon. Doing math homework with my daughter (Emory, age 9). We just potty-trained my youngest (Halle, age 2 1/2). So there’s a lot going on in our family life right now that takes a lot of attention.”

“There are a lot of sacrifices that you have to make in this profession if you want to be at the top of your game,” he said. “Fortunately, I married a good one (Jessica) who understands that. We were together for a long time before we got married, and so she knew what the NFL world was going to look like. And she does a great job holding everything together for us.”

Similarly, defensive coordinator Dennis Allen held everything together for Johnson while he focused on the overall duties of a first-time head coach.

But like at home, Johnson feels the need to make up for missed time at the office.

When asked where he thinks he fell short last season — despite an 11-6 campaign and a wild-card playoff win against the Green Bay Packers — “the first thing that comes to mind is time management, the allocation of it,” he said.

Johnson said he spent so much time installing a new offense and teaching the scheme that it drew his attention away from defense and special teams.

“When I watch the self-scout, there’s multiple cut-ups that I’m not proud of,” he said. “I take that personally and (it) makes me feel like I should have done a better job, either coaching the coaches or coaching the players, or spending just a little bit more time making sure that what we were doing was the right thing that particular week.

“And so there’s a lot of that going on. But the time management portion of it, I think I can tweak a little bit and help us out.”

This offseason, he has split his time between offense and defense and has attended nearly every defensive staff meeting, an experience he found “eye-opening.”

Johnson also has been able to lend his perspective as an offensive game-planner, someone whose job last season was to break down style and the defensive tendencies of 14 opponents — 15 including the Los Angeles Rams in the postseason.

“More so than the scheme and what (about) each defense is a little bit unique to them, it’s the play style (that) jumps off the tape,” Johnson said. “And so (Allen) and I are in agreement that the times that we played the game the way we wanted to play … when that ball carrier’s tackled, we hit ‘pause’ as a coaching staff — how many blue jerseys are in that frame?”

Johnson’s referring to defenders rallying to the ball, and there were some good and “not-so-good” clips.

“That’s one example of (how) we need to bring that vision to life a little bit more,” he said. “We need to demand that out of our players a little bit more.”

According to NFL’s Next Gen Stats, the Bears had the league’s slowest average get-off at 0.93 seconds.

Chicago’s 6.57% sacks per pass attempts ranked 21st.

“In an effort to get a better pass rush, well, how do we get off the ball faster?” Johnson said. “As a crew, defensive tackles or ends, we’re a little bit later off the ball than some of our counterparts around the league. How do we drill that in practice?

“Because it’s all about split seconds, tenths of seconds mixed in there, that you’re looking to affect that quarterback.”

Bears general manager Ryan Poles said Johnson “did a phenomenal job” helming a team that won the NFC North division for the first time since 2018.

Despite giving up chunk plays against the run and the pass, the Bears led the NFL in takeaways with 33 (23 interceptions and 10 fumble recoveries).

“That’s where his relationship with Dennis Allen was huge,” Poles told the Tribune. “So any blind spots that (Johnson) had, he had a former head coach in the building that could help him in those situations.

“I think anytime it’s the first year, you’re trying to figure out what your routine is going to be like. Probably some extra time you’re going to spend in different areas to make sure that things are going the right way, and that takes you away from other things.”

In his second year, Johnson is learning how to better prioritize his time.

“It sounds like he’s all over that, and from our conversation, he is,” Poles said.

With the offensive scheme established, “he can spend a little bit of time flexing over the defense and making sure that they’re running it the way that he wants as well,” Poles said. “So it’s been cool to see him work both sides, structure the offseason so he can be in both sets of meetings, and I know that’s appreciated by the defensive staff, too.

“To have the attention of the head coach means that he cares about what’s going on and wants that unit to be playing at a high level.”

It certainly helps that Johnson can hand over certain responsibilities on the offensive side to former pass game coordinator Press Taylor, who replaced Declan Doyle as offensive coordinator after Doyle took on the same role — but with playcalling duties — with the Baltimore Ravens.

“He’s not learning the offense,” Johnson said of Taylor. “He’s not learning how the playcaller’s mind works or anything like that.

“He’s able to really look and fill voids. And I think that’s what the best assistant coaches do is they find blind spots and they go ahead and look to solve those issues themselves rather than allowing them to become big issues. He does that.”

Taylor served for three seasons (2022-24) as the Jacksonville Jaguars’ offensive coordinator under head coach Doug Pederson.

Johnson called Taylor “the most organized coach I’ve ever been around at this level.

“He’s got libraries of plays. He knows when we’re going against this defensive coordinator, we can go to this little section that he’s already got labeled for that guy and that particular scheme and the things that have given them issues in the past.

“And that gives us a good starting point each and every week of where we can start with a game plan. And so I feel really good about the transition. He was natural in front of the room, the opportunities that he got last year. … That experience really helps.”

This doesn’t mean Johnson believes that the offense is a finished product.

He wants his playmakers to hone in more on details.

But he’ll be leaning heavily on a third-year wide receiver in Rome Odunze and two second-year pass catchers in tight end Colston Loveland and receiver Luther Burden III.

“I think a number of young players, route runners, going into Year 2, I think this is going to be a good offseason for them to fully understand why we’re doing things,” Johnson said. “As much as we wanted to teach the ‘why’ last year, sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle as you’re learning formations and concepts and blah, blah, blah.

“Now that hopefully we’re past that with some of these young players, now we can understand why we’re doing things, what we’re looking to attack, coverage recognition, so that we can play a little bit faster — not only those route runners, but also with our quarterback (Caleb Williams).

“Now that we’ve got all these concepts on tape and he lived them real-time, we can see the big picture just a little bit more.”

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