The Chicago Bears were not in a good way. After a brutal 0-2 start to the 2025 season, head coach Ben Johnson watched his team barely scrape their way to two wins before reaching the bye week. Something was seriously wrong with the offense. Quarterback Caleb Williams was still not playing in rhythm. There were too many penalties, and the running game was nonexistent. If the Bears wanted any hope of getting back into the NFC race, those issues had to be addressed. The first objective was to find the problems.
Ben Solak of ESPN discovered in an interview that a big concern through that first month was the sheer size of the play calls. Some of them ran for ten words, and they were scrambling the brains of several players. It was a big reason for so many penalties and miscommunications. Johnson had no intention of dumbing down the calls. That meant he had to find a way to make them easier to digest. His solution came after careful research and a willingness to set aside his ego for the greater good.
Ben Johnson was pointed to a novel solution by Bears rookies.
Johnson and his staff tried to alleviate the pressure by one-wording playcalls — smashing each of them into one load-bearing keyword…
…Every offense uses keywords like this to execute in the no-huddle. But to have up to 10 full playcalls on the one-word sheet for any given week — calls in which the Bears could still motion, shift, kill a play, adjust an alignment, etc. — and then to replace those with 10 new ones the following week was quite the task. Johnson, offensive coordinator Declan Doyle and Taylor all hailed from pretty wordy backgrounds, and it took a lot of brainstorming and outside research to get a workable one-word system.
They also leaned on the players for help. Many of the Bears’ younger players lived in codeword-style offenses in college, where one-word calls for the sake of tempo are far more commonplace. They gave ideas for clever mnemonics and enjoyed bullying Taylor during his Wednesday presentations on the absurd portmanteaus he had concocted.
These one-worders weren’t training wheels, mind you — just better teaching. Just as Johnson had put the full onus of his playbook on his young offense, he also put the onus on himself to meet the players where they were — to give them the offense in a language they could understand.
Johnson’s greatest strength might be his most understated.
That is his pragmatism. This is not a coach who has developed a system and is painstakingly married to it. Sure, he has certain things he wants to do, but there is no specific method he demands to accomplish them. He has the mindset of doing whatever it takes to get it done. If that means going from inside-zone to outside-zone running the ball? Do it. If that means featuring the tight ends more because the receivers aren’t catching the ball consistently? Fine. If that means adjusting the language so your players can digest it more easily? Whatever. Find a way.
Can’t say it didn’t work. The offense found momentum more and more as the season progressed. The running game became a force behind their retooled offensive line and the tandem of D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai. Meanwhile, Williams grew more confident by the week, learning to play the game at a cerebral level. Towards the end of the regular season, they felt they could play against anybody, and often proved correct. The trick was getting them to think less and play faster. Trimming the wording on play calls did the trick.
🔥 Subscribe to the Untold Chicago YouTube channel to hear Chicago legends tell stories you’ve never seen in headlines — real moments, real experiences, straight from the athletes themselves.
Most coaches don’t stay on top for one reason.
They’re unwilling to adapt to the times. Football changes. Every decade or so, the game undergoes another evolution. In the 2000s, it was the zone blitz. In the 2010s, it was the run-pass option. The 2020s have seen a resurgence of the running game through creative alignments and motion. Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, and Ben Johnson have been at the forefront of that revolution. The Bears’ head coach has repeatedly said he is always looking for new ways to evolve.
This isn’t something many coaches embrace. They often reach the heights of their profession doing things a certain way and, understandably, decide to keep doing it. Why deviate from what works? The problem is that NFL teams always find ways to adjust. Sooner or later, they’ll catch up. The only way to prevent that is by constantly evolving what you do. Johnson is one of those rare types.
