After the 2025 season ended, Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson was asked how the team could build on the momentum of such a successful run heading into 2026. Johnson shook his head. There would be no riding a wave into next year. In his mind, the Bears would be starting over from scratch. They’d have to climb the mountain again from the bottom. It was an odd response. Previous head coaches would’ve agreed that they must maintain the trajectory and use that success to build confidence and so on.
So why is Johnson so prickly when asked questions about last year? Well, the head coach finally heard enough and decided to provide a clear answer. It comes down to the reality of today’s NFL. This 2026 Bears team isn’t the same one that finished last season. Several of the key players who helped that squad are gone. D.J. Moore? Traded. Tremaine Edmunds? Released. Kevin Byard, Jaquan Brisker, and Nahshon Wright? Left in free agency. Johnson wants to focus on the players here now. These are the guys who will help the Bears win.
“Listen all I care about is, ‘does it help us win or not?’.. the guys that aren’t out there, they’re not helping us win. I want to talk about the guys that are out there helping us right now. I want stories to be written about those guys. We have 90 guys on the roster right now, a lot of which are fighting for their professional careers and their stories are incredible. Talking about last year, isn’t going to help us win.”
Ben Johnson has a fundamental understanding of modern football.
In many ways, people still cling to the old ways of thinking in that the team you put on the field one year will be the same team the next year. That was largely true in the early years of the Super Bowl era. Back then, teams maintained much greater control over their players. There was no free agency, and the only way to add talent was via the draft or trades. Thus, it was far more common to see players stay on the same roster for more than four or five years. That isn’t the case anymore. Especially these days.
Roster turnover has become a fact of life in today’s NFL. It isn’t uncommon to see a third of your roster overturned during an offseason. The best teams are no longer the ones that just build an incredible lineup and ride it out. You have to assemble a strong core of great players and then constantly build and rebuild around them from year to year. Ben Johnson understands this reality. He saw it play out in both Miami and Detroit as an assistant. That is why he can’t waste precious time dwelling on last year.
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This is why the Bears are in good hands.
Thinking about the past is part of why this organization hasn’t been able to win consistently for years. It is so focused on tradition and the glory days that they haven’t adapted to the times. Johnson recognized that from the moment he arrived. It is why he has spent every waking hour working to change the mindset. The present and future. Those are the only two things that matter. Nothing about the past helps you win. It’s a distraction. You can reminisce after you retire. Until then, keep your eyes on the prize.
Reporters may not like this. They want to keep the magic of such a memorable season alive as long as possible. It makes for great reading. That isn’t Johnson’s problem. His goal isn’t patting himself on the back for a season that, in his mind, was a failure. Until he’s hoisting that Lombardi trophy over his head with confetti everywhere, any discussion outside of winning games is pointless.
