Adding Joe Thuney was a no-brainer for the Chicago Bears. He is a multi-time All-Pro guard who will likely enter the Hall of Fame after he retires. Any time you have a chance to add somebody like that to the locker room, you should. Head coach Ben Johnson and GM Ryan Poles knew they needed a significant presence on the offensive line—somebody who could be great on the field and on the sidelines. By all accounts, Thuney was fantastic in both areas. Kansas City didn’t want to trade him. They had no choice.
Johnson didn’t need advice on how to deploy the 32-year-old on the field. Plug him at left guard and let him do his thing. However, the Bears’ head coach recognized he had an important opportunity in front of him. Here is a guy with incredible experience from a standpoint of success. Not only is he a great individual player, but he’s won four Super Bowls. There had to be a way to exploit that. According to Patrick Finley of the [Chicago Sun-Times](https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears/2025/08/28/bears-ben-johnson-resilience-training-camp-grit-principle-grady-jarrett-patriots-falcons-super-bowl-li-28-3), Johnson didn’t take long to find it. In an effort to instruct the Bears on the need for mental toughness, he showed them footage of the iconic Patriots’ comeback in the Super Bowl against Atlanta.
> To achieve the most infamous comeback in NFL history — if not the history of American sports — the Patriots scored 25 consecutive points to end regulation, including a touchdown and two-point conversion with a minute left. They won in overtime after marching 75 yards on eight plays, never even needing a third down.
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> Johnson showed key moments of the game, having left guard Joe Thuney, a four-time Super Bowl champ who played for the Patriots, **narrate what his team was thinking and saying throughout the game**.
One thing that isn’t done nearly enough in the NFL is understanding a basic rule: if you have an asset, use it as much as possible. Use it for all its worth because there is no telling how long you’ll have it. Ben Johnson shows the knowledge and wherewithal to do that. He immediately understood that Thuney was valuable to the team’s goal of building a winner. His talent alone would help, but a smart team would find ways to take advantage of his experience. Johnson did that in the best way possible by ensuring the entire team understood his mindset in the most high-pressure situation in modern NFL history. With luck, other players will start adopting that mindset, making the Bears a much tougher team to beat late in games.
