Time is the greatest luxury a team can have this time of year. That is because it’s limited. The CBA doesn’t allow coaches the same extended periods of practice they enjoyed in the earlier days of the league. That means guys like Ben Johnson can’t afford to waste a single second of the practice schedule on frivolous things. His job is getting Caleb Williams up to speed at quarterback as swiftly as possible. Most would think that is why Johnson threw the entire playbook at him throughout OTAs. He wants to get Williams digesting as much information as possible, as quickly as possible.
That is part of it, but it isn’t the only reasoning behind the approach. Johnson explains that one of his primary goals in that process was to use various play calls to paint a picture. He wanted to see which ones Williams handled well and which ones he struggled with. That gave the head coach a good idea of the quarterback’s strengths and weaknesses. This will help him fine-tune the offensive scheme going into training camp, where the Bears can start working out a system that Williams can run.
Johnson easily could’ve just brought his system with him from Detroit. He would’ve been justified. It delivered three consecutive top-six finishes and two playoff appearances. The head coach could have told his young quarterback, ‘This is what we’re running. You’d better learn how to execute it.’ Instead, Johnson understood that doing that almost guaranteed Caleb Williams would fail. He is not the same type of quarterback as Jared Goff. A different player requires a different approach. That is what has made Andy Reid so successful for years. It seems Johnson has the same mindset. There is a strong probability this Bears offense will look significantly different from the one he built with the Lions.
