JJ Watt will be in the Hall of Fame soon enough. He was the best pass rusher of his generation. So the guy knows a lot about what good offenses look like. After all, he went against peak Lamar Jackson, peak Cam Newton, peak Peyton Manning, peak Tom Brady, and peak Aaron Rodgers. Great quarterbacks may lead the way, but you’ll often find great play callers behind them. From what he’s seen over the past three months, the Chicago Bears have found one of the best in Ben Johnson.
Watt has followed the progress of this offense since it began in September. There is no denying that Johnson’s creativity remains on display, but that might not be his superpower. The Bears head coach is becoming a master at making adjustments, both in-game and in-season. The former edge rusher explained on The Pat McAfee Show.
“I mean, I’ve talked about Ben Johnson multiple times, but just the things that he does and how blunt and honest he is about correcting issues that are wrong. He talked about the passing game. If you go back to their bye week, he talked about fixing their run game, and ever since that bye week, the running game has been on fire. It’s been unbelieveable. Now, he’s talked about fixing their passing game, and you would imagine when he says something, he’s going to get it fixed because that’s what we’ve seen before. His players respect it, and not only is he fixing things, he’s doing it while winning.”
Johnson is a maestro when it comes to finding solutions.
Yet that isn’t even what would scare Watt the most about this offense. It is more the fact that this isn’t even its final form. We are still seeing the baby version of Johnson’s system.
“Like, they are in first place in the NFC. That’s the Chicago Bears, who last year had a complete collapse and fell apart. He’s come in and done this, and he hasn’t even added that second full offseason to do everything he wants to do, so I think the sky’s the limit there when he continues to get Caleb (Williams) to develop.”
JJ Watt realizes Johnson hasn’t gone Super Saiyan yet.
He’s fighting every opponent this year in his base form. Yet he’s still on pace to put up 443 points this season, which would be the third-most in franchise history. No wonder JJ Watt is in awe of what Johnson is doing. If this is what he can accomplish with the basic stuff, there is no telling how much deadlier the Bears will be once they start digging deeper into the playbook. Remember, the Detroit Lions went from scoring 453 points to 461 and finally 564 under Johnson. It gets better and better as the layers unfold.
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Much of this hinges on quarterback Caleb Williams. Chicago can already run the ball among the NFL’s best thanks to Johnson’s scheming and excellent play up front. The one thing holding everything back is the passing game. Williams has improved significantly in running the system efficiently. He just hasn’t been able to string together enough completions. Everybody knows that it is the final door to unlock. Whenever it happens, this offense will transform into something the NFL doesn’t want to see.
