Plenty of names get thrown around for who the best head coach was in NFL history. You get the obvious ones like Bill Belichick, Don Shula, Vince Lombardi, Bill Walsh, and Andy Reid. It isn’t hard to understand why. All of them had incredible success over extended periods of time. However, one name that should come up more often is Bill Parcells. The Hall of Famer coached 19 years in the league. He won two Super Bowls in New York, reached another in New England, reached an AFC championship with the Jets, and had three winning seasons with Dallas in four years.
If that weren’t enough, his coaching tree is equally impressive, boasting Belichick, Tom Coughlin, and Sean Payton, who have collectively won a combined nine Super Bowls. The Parcells approach is a proven one across 40 years of NFL history. Being compared to him would certainly be a big deal, and that is what happened with Ben Johnson. People inside the league got the sense that the Chicago Bears’ head coach had a similar style based on how he treated players in training camp. Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated put it best.
There was no hand-holding. He was looking for weakness.
And that went for everything. From the way the players practiced to the amount the coaches were throwing at them, Ben Johnson was conducting what looked very much like an old-school Parcells-ian weeding out through the offseason (which makes sense since Dan Campbell, whom Johnson worked with in Miami and for in Detroit, is a Bill Parcells protégé). He was going to find out how much his guys could handle, one way or the other.
The result, as I see it anyway, was on display with five minutes left in Saturday night’s showdown with the Packers, with the Bears down 16–6 and searching for a spark. Most teams with Chicago’s recent history would probably be dead in the water, even with a record of 10–4, in that spot. These Bears weren’t—and it goes back to how Johnson hardened them.
Bill Parcells understood the fine line with players.
He knew he couldn’t be their buddy. It didn’t matter if they liked him. What mattered was that they did what he told them to do. If that meant he had to be hard on them, so be it. Players openly admitted they couldn’t stand him because of his hardass style. However, they tolerated it because they soon realized his approach worked. They went from 3-12-1 in his first year to 9-7 in his second. Parcells knew how to establish an identity and build a culture of toughness and camaraderie. He could get guys to believe.
Johnson is the same way. Yes, he’s intense and can be harsh with his criticism. However, he always makes it clear it comes from a place of wanting to win. Everything is about winning. If you just trust him and put in the work, everything will work out. Now, like Bill Parcells, he has taken a 5-12 team to 11-4 in his first season. Everything points to the Bears being a force in the coming years as they continue developing the identity Johnson has set for them.
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