CHICAGO — The challenge ahead for Ben Johnson is to ascend the peak the Chicago Bears have found difficult to navigate.

Twenty years since the Bears last enjoyed consecutive winning seasons, here they are with a chance to validate that last season’s dramatic turnaround was a launching point, that they have arrived — with a bright, young head coach and an ebullient quarterback in Caleb Williams — as a legitimate contender for the foreseeable future.

Sustained success — general manager Ryan Poles’ stated goal when he was hired in 2022 — is difficult to attain in the NFL. Teams can turn in a heartbeat from darlings to ones fraught with problems. Look no further than the Washington Commanders, who reached the NFC championship game in the 2024 season and begin this season with coach Dan Quinn under immense pressure after last year’s collapse.

From 2002, when the NFL went to eight four-team divisions, through 2024, 25 teams had a single-season jump from worst to first, including the 2005 Bears. Five went on to repeat as division champs the following season (the 2006 Bears included), five went back to the division cellar the next season and only eight of the 25 (32%) repeated as a playoff team.

Those are the odds stacked against Johnson and the Bears as they attempt to fight through the competitive balance that the league is based on and that tends to pull so many teams back to the middle of the pack.

“I feel really good about the path that we’re on,” Johnson said last month during the middle of training camp.

‘How are we coaching this?’

A primary theme at the outset of the offseason was that the Bears would coach better in 2026. Coaches always say if a player isn’t getting better, he’s getting worse. It stands to reason they can be held to a similar measuring system.

So much time was invested last year in learning one another and installing systems on both sides of the ball. Johnson was intentional in forming his staff. He didn’t want to fill it with only people he had worked with. He sought perspectives and ideas from coaches from different backgrounds and varied coaching trees.

As the Bears rolled to an 11-6 season and the NFC North title, those coaches were still learning how each other thinks, still blending ideas for what they could become. All the while, they were getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of each player on the roster.

The rebuild was fast-tracked with a talented offensive core and an opportunistic defense, and so here the Bears are, primed to begin the season Sunday against the Carolina Panthers at Bank of America Stadium with expectations for a similar playoff run — or more.

It begs the question: How did Johnson, who turned 40 in May, become better as a coach with one season at Halas Hall under his belt?

He stayed true to his roots when the offseason evaluation began, examining every last bit of film from 2025 while asking this question: How can I coach better?

The task sounds mundane, and in many ways it certainly is. It’s play, rewind, play, discuss, play — over and over. Day after day. Week after week.

“We watched every single play ad nauseam,” Johnson said. “How are we coaching this? Every coach is having their turn and we’re reliving all of that. It’s just in a different setting.”

Instead of beginning in Week 1 and working through the season chronologically, they grouped plays by type and concept and then attacked different situations like third down, red zone and two minute. On defense, they looked at the various calls and pressures and attacked the situations similarly.

At every step, the same questions were asked. Had the players been put in the best position to succeed? Was there a better way to do this?

Johnson would meet with the defensive staff in the morning for four hours. There was an hour for special teams and then four hours with the offense in the afternoon. How deep into the weeds did they get? Sometimes 60 minutes with the special teams coaches was consumed by as little as a review of 10 punts.

A project that could take about three weeks stretched closer to five because assistants inevitably were pulled away for pro day visits or other conflicts. This is where the coaches really got into the nitty-gritty and the smallest details of technique.

What’s one thing that came from all of this?

“You could tell he had been meeting with defense,” offensive coordinator Press Taylor said. “Because as an offensive coach, you’ve studied a lot of defense and feel like you know, but to sit in a defensive meeting and hear those guys talk about what causes issues and all these different things, I think that spurred a lot of ideas for Ben about what is really challenging for these guys and how can we incorporate more of it. Or we thought something was a big challenge but for our defense, it doesn’t give them as many issues as we thought.

“This offseason can only help us.”

Johnson believes he’s a better-rounded head coach now in overseeing every facet of the team.

“I’ve been talking about how do we bring the three phases together to play a more complete game,” he said. “Well, by having a greater understanding of what we’re coaching and what we’re asking our guys to do. I feel I will be more prepared to do that this year than what I was.”

‘It doesn’t feel like he’s missed’

Then there’s the handling of a roster that has 90 players in the offseason and more than 70 in season when including injured reserve and the practice squad.

As an offensive coordinator in Detroit, Johnson worked in one silo. At Halas Hall, he’s spread everywhere as the head coach, the offensive play caller, the face of the organization and more.

Get too consumed with any one task, and a coach can lose the pulse of the locker room, something that in more ways than one eluded his recent predecessors.

“DA (defensive coordinator Dennis Allen) said something last year: ‘Come into work every single day anticipating something coming on your desk that you didn’t expect,'” Johnson said. “If you come in with that, that’s the normal and you’re never going to be surprised.

“That’s where I’m a little antsy right now. I don’t feel like it’s happened much in camp. Like, this feels too smooth. This is too good to be true right now. And I know the tough times will come. When those things happen — a lot of things that people don’t even know about — when those things happened, when I look back at it, some of the best parts of bringing our team together.”

Johnson declined to offer even vague references to any of the twists and turns they navigated last season. Certainly he has had to deal with at least one so far this year, with nickel cornerback Kyler Gordon still unavailable because of a soft-tissue injury.

He has declined to say much publicly about Gordon, preferring the focus remain on players who are available. He can be as blunt as they come when addressing players both privately and in team meetings.

He also picks and chooses spots to lighten the mood, moments that surprise most of the staff.

“He came in after practice one day with the coaches, it was kind of hot, kind of muggy, and Ben starts going, ‘How about this weather?'” Taylor said. “We’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s hot.’ And he says it’s El Niño and everybody is like, ‘What are you talking about?’

“No one really knew where he was going with it, and he said, ‘It’s this weather pattern.’ He goes (to tight ends coach) Jim Dray, ‘I’m going to have Sam Roush present on it.'”

Dray gave Roush, a rookie tight end from Stanford, a heads up that he best be prepared to deliver a presentation on El Niño, which is created when the Pacific Ocean temperature rises to a level that it affects air current and jet streams and can alter global weather.

“One of those days in camp, I get up in front of the group and it’s early morning and I say, ‘How about this weather, guys?'” Johnson said. “They’re like, ‘What the (heck) are you talking about?’

“It’s El Niño season. You guys know about El Niño, right?”

Crickets.

“What is wrong with you? Does anyone know about El Niño?”

That’s when Roush confirmed he did. The rookie came forward and delivered a 10-minute presentation complete with a PowerPoint.

“One public speaking tip I’ve heard is you don’t want to lock your legs because you might pass out,” Roush said. “So I didn’t lock my legs, but then at one point my knee started shaking so I’m like, ‘OK, I just have to steady my voice so it doesn’t sound like my voice is shaking.’ But my knee was shaking. I was a little bit nervous out there. Everybody liked it. It was solid.”

There are other times when Johnson doesn’t care about long, humid days and the increased chance for tropical storms.

“Sometimes he has to lay the hammer,” right guard Jonah Jackson said. “And I feel like he does a good job of balancing that. You take it for what it is because the truth is the truth. It’s a man’s sport and you’ve got to be honest with one another.”

Said Taylor: “Roush owned it. I think everyone was more stunned in the crowd of how did this happen. No one sees the behind the scenes. Ben’s got a lot of them and there is a time and a place for everything.

“The beauty of it all is the way he can feel the moment but also deliver what the team needs in that moment. So far, it doesn’t feel like he’s missed.”

‘I want to open his horizons’

Like most teams, the Bears will go as far as their coach and quarterback carry them. They’re huge cogs in a large machine, but it’s almost impossible to find a perennial contender that lacks an elite quarterback.

There were questions aplenty a year ago about the coach-quarterback relationship, and now those inquiries are focused on how Johnson can aid Williams in elevating his game. He has so much talent and ability to do such a variety of things that, at times, there can be a danger in considering too much and not homing in.

“Part of this is why it is so fun to coach him too,” Johnson said. “Because it’s challenging, it’s different. You’re trying to find the right notes to strike that give us the desired effect.”

The bond has grown very strong, in large part because of Williams’ willingness to be coached hard. With the season starting, that process now shifts to include game reviews. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, looks slightly different, because Johnson doesn’t want to change who Williams is as a quarterback.

“I talk to him all the time about, ‘Hey, when we’re watching tape, I am going to bring things up just to stimulate thought in your head,'” Johnson said. “It’s like: ‘Hey, we can stay in (the pocket). We can just sidestep to the right half a yard and we can still deliver the ball to that open receiver right there. Rather than what your natural inclination is, which is to escape on out, extend the play and we may or may not have something.’

“I don’t want to take that away. That was a powerful part of who he was and is, and it’s an asset to us. We’re going to continue to lean into it, but at the same time, I want to open his horizons a little bit: ‘This is another option for you. It’s going to be just as effective for us as a team if you just do — boom — dump and let your playmaker (go).”

Johnson emphatically described how strong the supporting cast is around Williams, saying everyone doesn’t understand yet how good the group is. That brought him to a basketball analogy.

“Because of that, his job is more point guard than it is shooting guard at times,” Johnson said. “We’re trying to relay that message, but at the same time we don’t want to take away his scoring ability either. We’re going to need that. But there are some times that he can lob the assist and we’ll score more points that way.”

That’s the balance Johnson, who is constantly pushing the gas pedal on offense, must weigh with a quarterback capable of dizzying highlight plays.

After an offseason of self-examination, a new journey begins with the Bears eyeing a summit they haven’t reached in a long time.

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