Legendary Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka is 'the gold standard' at Halas Hall, Ben Johnson says

Sean Hammond, Chicago Tribune on Oct 9, 2026

Published in Football

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CHICAGO — There are two flags flying on the flagpoles outside Halas Hall on any given day: the stars and stripes, and a Chicago Bears flag.

On Friday, the Bears flag stood at half-staff. The franchise lost an icon with the death of Mike Ditka at age 86.

“As far as I’m concerned, Coach Ditka is the gold standard in terms of this place,” coach Ben Johnson said in his regularly scheduled news conference. “He’s a legend around here, as a player, as a coach. His impact is still being felt to this day. As the head coach of the Bears, I feel humbled to be in that same chair that he was once in.”

Johnson is the 19th coach in franchise history. Nobody except for perhaps team founder George S. Halas loomed quite as large as “Da Coach,” who led the Bears to their last championship in Super Bowl XX following the 1985 regular season. Ditka was the final coach Halas hired before his death in 1983.

Ditka coached the Bears for 11 seasons, winning 106 regular-season games and reaching the playoffs seven times. Only Halas won more games for the Bears (318). Before his coaching days, Ditka had a Hall of Fame career as a tight end that began when the Bears drafted him with the No. 5 pick in 1961. He won a championship with the team in 1963 and became the first tight end inducted into the Hall.

Plenty of men have tried to resurrect the magic of the 1980s Bears at Halas Hall, but the team hasn’t won another championship. His “gold standard,” as Johnson called it, remains one every Bears coach has chased since — Johnson included.

“That defense there in the ’80s, I mean, that was something to behold,” said Johnson, who was born in May 1986, a few months after Super Bowl XX. “And we keep talking about the ‘Monsters of the Midway’ and how much we’d like to bring that back. They were the standard and they have been for some time.

“But I think he had a lot to do with that mindset. Certainly they were great players, but that head coach was, he was special, a special individual.”

Johnson, hired in January 2025, coached the Bears to their first playoff win in 15 years last season. He said he never met Ditka but doesn’t take lightly the responsibility of sitting in the chair Ditka once immortalized.

“His picture is all over the place,” Johnson said of Halas Hall. “I don’t know if there’s been a head coach with that much — other than, obviously, George Halas — but that much success.”

Ditka’s death was felt far and wide across the NFL on Friday. Across the division, Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell, a mentor of Johnson’s in Detroit, learned of Ditka’s death during his Friday news conference. As a 6-foot-5, 265-pound tight end coming into the league in 1999, Campbell fondly recalled his NFL scouting combine meeting with Ditka, who was then the coach of the New Orleans Saints.

In retelling the story Friday, Campbell said he knew Ditka would be in the interview room, but he wasn’t quite sure who else from the Saints might be present.

“I go in and there’s one little light on,” Campbell said. “It’s like a little lamp in the corner. It’s at the train station and there’s nothing in there. There are no couches. The room is totally cleaned out and there’s one little table and the room is full of smoke. I mean, you can’t hardly even see him. You just see this image off in the corner of this little lamp and smoke everywhere and he’s got that big fat cigar. It was one of the best times of my life and most intimidating times of my life sitting across from Mike Ditka.”

The Saints didn’t draft Campbell, but he did finish his playing career in New Orleans in 2009 long after Ditka was done coaching.

Just days before the Green Bay Packers and Bears resume their historic rivalry Sunday at Lambeau Field, the Packers offered their condolences to the Ditka family and Bears organization. In a statement, the Packers called Ditka “one of the fiercest competitors in NFL history.”

“Mike helped define the intensity and tradition of the Packers-Bears rivalry, the oldest in professional football,” the Packers said in their statement. “He embodied the toughness and passion that have made the rivalry one of the most storied in all of sports.”

In his news conference Friday, Packers coach Matt LaFleur noted that “the things that he accomplished in this game are legendary.”

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Ditka “epitomized football.”

“He brought intensity, authenticity, and an unmistakable personality to everything he did,” Goodell said in a statement. “As a Hall of Fame player, Super Bowl-winning coach with his beloved and iconic Bears, and as a broadcaster, Mike served as an ambassador for the game and inspired generations of fans.”