Courtney CroninMar 30, 2026, 02:34 PM ET
Close
Open Extended Reactions
PHOENIX -- Ben Johnson has closed the book on the 2025 Chicago Bears for good.
Months after an 11-win regular season ended with the Bears winning their first playoff game in 15 years after Chicago beat the Green Bay Packers in the wild-card round, the 39-year-old coach no longer wants to be reminded of last year's success.
"It's been a long offseason in terms of you go downtown or you go somewhere, and everyone's patting you on the back and telling you what a great, great job you did," Johnson said Monday during the coaches' breakfast at the annual league meetings. "You don't want to hear it. You don't want to hear it anymore, all right. It was great for the first week, but now our sights are turned. And we got a monumental task at hand, because this division only got better so far this offseason, and we still have the draft to come. So our guys, we got to go back to work just like we did a year ago."
Editor's Picks
The 2026 Bears already look different after the team saw a handful of veteran leaders depart throughout March. Center Drew Dalman's retirement kicked off a wave of moves that included wide receiver DJ Moore being traded to the Buffalo Bills and safety Kevin Byard signing with the New England Patriots in free agency.
The impact of these losses on the Bears locker room isn't lost on Johnson, who put the onus on his coaching staff to quickly identify and squash any signs of complacency.
"I know us as coaches, we're going to be hyper alert for any signs of that," Johnson said. "That is part of the thing. When you lose so many guys to free agency and you bring in a new crew that does help with the entitlement and complacency."
Speaking publicly for the first time since free agency, Johnson gave rave reviews of several new additions, including center Garrett Bradbury, who he believes is "going to fit us like a glove" and the leadership traits from safety Coby Bryant that he feels will fill the void created by Byard's absence.
"I don't know Coby Bryant quite as well and yet my little exposure with him when he came in after [he signed] was 'holy cow, this guy has got the IT factor to him,' he's got some dynamic traits in terms of his personality that I think are going to rub off on our guys and not to mention the way he plays the game is what we want our defense to look like as well," Johnson said.
The Bears set an NFL record during Johnson's first season by winning six games despite trailing in the final minutes of the fourth quarter of the regular season. Quarterback Caleb Williams orchestrated seven game-winning drives, including a memorable rally in the playoffs against the Packers when the Bears scored 25 points in the fourth quarter to beat Green Bay 31-27 after trailing 21-3 at halftime.
Those furious rallies dubbed Chicago the "Cardiac Bears," an identity Johnson still wants the 2026 Bears to embody should they find themselves trailing late in games.
"I think that part needs to stay the same in terms of when we need to be at our best in the fourth quarter, that has to stay the same," Johnson said. "Those guys came through. They had belief and it showed up. They played really well in the fourth quarter. Now I look back, offensively, last half of the season -- I'm talking the last eight games, playoffs included -- we scored more points, fourth quarter on, than we did quarters one to three. That wasn't the case in the first half of the season. And so we got to figure out why we started the second half of the season so slow on offense. And that's a big mission of mine. We don't want to put ourselves behind the eight ball each and every week. That's not a formula for sustained success. We're better than that.
"We have too much talent on our offensive side of the ball for us to start off so slow and to dig ourselves in holes like that. And so we're going to come, we're going to find out what that is. And like I said before, a lot of times when you find areas to improve, you draw attention to it, naturally, that stuff gets corrected. Guys take a lot of pride in it."