After the Whistle: Reacting to Ben Johnson's postgame comments
What did we just see? What happened?
Watching the Bears' 27-24 loss to the Vikings Monday night at Soldier Field was like walking through a bakery, sampling cakes and cookies, then turning a corner and having a tin-bottomed, shaving-cream pie jammed in your face.
Everything we thought we knew about the Bears, everything we thought we were seeing at the start of this hugely built-up opening night game was just wet fluff.
The Bears scored on their first drive — excellent 9-yard scramble for the touchdown, Caleb Williams! — and that was about it for offensive grit. Leading 17-6 in the third quarter thanks to cornerback Nahshon Wright’s 74-yard interception for a touchdown of a JJ McCarthy pass, the Bears had this game in the bag.
They didn’t even need to do much — just hang on, show how much the team had grown, show the new discipline, let fans go home happy under a bright full moon.
But shockingly, inexplicably, the Bears’ blew it. A new coach, a mostly new offensive line, a new level of intensity, a new this and that. None of it mattered. This was the sixth straight Bears loss at home, with the last win coming almost 11 months ago against the Panthers, who were terrible. Does anybody even remember that game?
This come-from-ahead loss was so baffling that Bears coach Johnson himself sounded like he’d been hit with a club. ``You got it moving, got it going, then all of a sudden it starts going backwards,’’ he said post-game.
``It’s a growing process,’’ said quarterback Williams after his first game with the man who was the off-season’s hottest young coaching prospect in the NFL. ``It’s going to keep growing from here. It’s a start.’’
CHICAGO, IL - SEPTEMBER 08: Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson looks on prior to a game against the Minnesota Vikings on September 8, 2025 at Solider Field in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Where does it end? We wonder.
There were so many mistakes that you barely know where to start. How about four offensive line false starts before the half? Yes, that’s on the big guys who jumped, but is there a quarterback cadence issue, too? What do we think about Johnson going for it on fourth-and three at the Minnesota 23-yard line and Williams blowing it? You think a Bears field goal there might have mattered?
We all thought Williams would be close to a master tactician here at the start. After all, the Bears did win the coaching carousel when they snagged him from the Lions, the man who had devised all those tricky plays that maybe—hate to say it—maybe worked best when used against the Bears.
The quarterback issue is still on the front burner for the Bears, as it has been, basically, since Sid Luckman days. Williams looked very good in the beginning, with one feathery on-the-run, cross-field pass on the opening drive to running back D’Andre Swift being of particular note for its aggressiveness and touch.
Then it all died. Williams started 10-for-10 passing, finished 21-for-35 for 210 yards and one TD, and to this observer looked pretty much the same as a year ago. That is, inconsistent.
It got so bad for the Bears, with such seeming dispirited-ness and ineptitude that kicker Cairo Santos couldn’t even boot the ball out of the end zone when it mattered, just before the two-minute warning. The Vikings returned the kick, killed time and basically ruined any chance the Bears had to win the game.
What a stone-cold bummer this was. Not the least of the issues was that this was the first Monday Night Football game of the year with a fired-up crowd on a gorgeous night at Soldier Field. The 1985 Super Bowl champion Bears were honored in their nice blue blazers at halftime. Sorry, fellows. There was also the fact of how embarrassingly bad McCarthy had looked at the start, and how he and Williams seemed to switch identities in the second half.
By coming back to win from ten points down in the fourth quarter, McCarthy, 22, starting his first NFL game, became the first debut quarterback to do that since Steve Young did it for the Buccaneers forty years ago. But Young was 24 back then and had completed two seasons in the USFL, already passing for 4,102 yards and running for 883 more. I guess we won’t soon forget that the Bears could have drafted McCarthy who was taken after Williams and three other quarterbacks in the 2024 draft.
Vikings coach Kevin McConnell said he told McCarthy at halftime, ``You are going to bring us back to win this game.‘’ the coach added, ``The look in his eye was fantastic.’’
What a pity for Bears fans. The look in their eyes after this one was nothing but dismal.
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The Source: This article was written by Rick Telander, a contributing sports columnist for FOX 32 Chicago.
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