The Chicago Bears didn’t make any meaningful additions to their defensive end room. General manager Ryan Poles said the primary reason was to give the guys they added last year a real chance to build on what they started. That meant Dayo Odeyingbo and Shemar Turner. Both exited last season with injuries. Odeyingbo tore his Achilles and Turner his ACL. People aren’t sure what to expect from them since returning from those ailments can be difficult. Early signs are a mixed bag.

Head coach Ben Johnson was asked about the two players during this week’s mandatory minicamps. He stated that Odeyingbo’s progress is ahead of schedule. He is back practicing with the team, working himself back into top shape. The same can’t be said for Turner. Johnson didn’t offer many details, but his clipped response didn’t bode well for the former 2nd-round pick’s status. It sounds like the Bears are hopeful that he can get back by the start of training camp in July, but aren’t confident.

The Bears were banking a lot on Shemar Turner.

They took him in the 2nd round for a reason. Poles and defensive coordinator Dennis Allen saw a player with size, power, and aggression who should’ve made for a stout run defender and a versatile pass rusher. Yet the evidence available from last year indicated he was neither. This isn’t a condemnation of Turner. Lots of players don’t find their identity as rookies. Unfortunately, tearing his ACL at such a crucial part of his developmental phase is brutal timing. Johnson seems to hint that the recovery process hasn’t gone as smoothly as hoped.

He tore the ligament against the Baltimore Ravens on October 26th of last season. Presuming he had surgery in early November, which was the indication by the team, that means he is about seven months into his recovery. That falls directly in the 6-9 month window typical for this injury. He should at least be doing drills and conditioning by now. The fact that there is no word on anything with him is a red flag. Setting the timeline for training camp is a clear indication that the team hasn’t yet seen the progress it wants.

We’ll likely get an answer on where he is right before camp.

That will be the moment of truth for the Bears. If they add a notable name at defensive end via free agent, it’s a glaring sign that Shemar Turner is nowhere near ready. Remember, the team added no significant bodies to the mix this offseason. It was a clear gamble on their part that Turner and Odeyingbo would be back. The latter is already well on his way. Turner was injured right around the same time. For him to be nowhere close is not something that can be ignored forever.

Other teams are also asking themselves the same question. There is a strong possibility that the bigger names like Cameron Jordan and Jadeveon Clowney will be scooped up within the next month. The Bears can’t afford to linger on this issue forever. At some point, their medical staff will have to make a judgment call. If they feel Turner isn’t close enough for a return, Poles must move quickly to bring in someone they can rely on to be ready for opening day. It is unfortunate for Turner, but that is the cruel nature of the NFL.

By now, we know the current state of things. The Illinois legislature shot down the Chicago Bears’ megaprojects bill in the Senate. They quickly introduced a new bill that would’ve provided everything the team needed, but after passing it, the bill went back to the House, where it failed to pass before the spring legislative session expired. This put the Bears in a compromising position. Either they wait and hope the state government calls a special session to address the issue, or they pivot fully to Hammond, Indiana.

They chose the latter.

This was primarily done for political reasons. The Bears could not afford to look weak by sitting on their hands waiting for Illinois to do something. However, there may have been another reason why they chose to move on Hammond with more urgency. Mary Ann Ahern of NBC Chicago 5 was the first to provide some details.

Sources familiar with negotiations between the Bears and Indiana officials told NBC Chicago Political Reporter Mary Ann Ahern that the team is eyeing a second Hammond site, not far from the Wolf Lake tract that has been the primary focus of lawmakers and team officials up until this point.

Ahern spoke to Indiana State Rep. Earl Harris about the state of play in the ongoing stadium saga.

“There is a chance that there could be another site in Hammond,” he said. “I would say at this point, as long as it lands in Hammond in northwest Indiana, we’ll be very happy.”

This was later confirmed by Hammond mayor Thomas McDermott during a speech to local townsfolk and leaders. That location is the Lost Marsh Golf Course, around two miles east of the originally planned site of Wolf Lake.

The Chicago Bears have good reasons for the shift.

While the Wolf Lake site is larger in surface area, one problem has likely slowed the team’s willingness to make the jump. The lake is considered an active aquatic ecosystem and wildlife refuge. Had the Bears looked to build on certain portions of the wetlands, they would’ve been confronted by the Environmental Protection Agency and faced years of expensive litigation. That doesn’t include structural disputes with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It would’ve been a headache.

Such is not the case with Lost Marsh. Unlike Wolf Lake, it sits on a solid man-made foundation. The golf course was built over an old industrial landfill. Hammond capped and restored the site years ago, passing every safety inspection with flying colors. Recent tests conducted by the Bears have also come back clean. There would be no environmental fight from the federal government. Most importantly, it is cheap. Reports indicate it’d cost no more than $30 million to purchase from the city.

Time is running out for Illinois.

Maybe Hammond was a bluff at first. The Chicago Bears wanted to get their attention so the government would take their issue seriously. That has changed. Indiana is offering a sweet deal. They’re prepared to finance everything except the stadium’s construction, which is fine with the Bears. They’ve been prepared to handle that from the beginning. Property taxes? Infrastructure? All taken care of. All the franchise has to do is find a spot they like and pick it. Lost Marsh sounds like it might be growing into the favorite.

This might explain why Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker stated in a recent public interview that he’d be willing to call a special session of the legislature this summer to resume efforts to pass a bill allowing the Bears to build in Arlington Heights. He senses the danger. That is probably why McDermott is so confident. He knows Illinois doesn’t have nearly the unity or leadership necessary to salvage the situation. It’s Hammond’s race to lose, and adding a potentially better building site might’ve been the killing blow.

Drafting Zavion Thomas in the 3rd round wasn’t the most popular decision by the Chicago Bears back in April. Many couldn’t understand the reasoning. The team already looked settled at wide receiver with Rome Odunze, Luther Burden, and Kalif Raymond. They still had a glaring hole at edge rusher. Why take a player at a position that wasn’t really a need and also wasn’t projected to go that high? Head coach Ben Johnson explained that Thomas had certain qualities you just can’t teach. Qualities the Bears don’t have enough of.

Chief among them is speed. Thomas ran a 4.28 at the scouting combine, one of the fastest in the entire draft class. It certainly shows on his college tape, too. It is why he was one of the most dangerous return men in the country. However, Johnson believes there is so much untapped potential in Thomas as a receiving threat that LSU never exploited. The Bears provided an appetizer with a recent minicamp clip on Tuesday. It showed Tyson Bagent throwing a screen to Thomas, who took it all the way for a touchdown.

That one play illustrates the Zavion Thomas threat.

People think it’s all about the speed when throwing a screen like that. Sure, it’s an important part, but this is where his experience as a return man becomes a huge factor. His vision and acceleration allow him to hit the open lane immediately, not giving the defense time to rally and close the breach. No other Bears player on the roster has that combination. Defenses will have no choice but to respect the threat he poses. That added attention will lean directly into what makes Johnson so dangerous as a play caller.

His traps.

One thing the Bears’ head coach does better than almost anybody else is making different plays look the same. This enables him to lay traps early in the game. The defense sees the play go one way, two, or three times. Then later in the game, he springs the trap by running the same formation in a completely different way. Few players are more effective at this than wide receiver screens. There are six notable fakes that teams can run out of that play. Johnson should know. He used one of them to beat the Green Bay Packers in the playoffs.

That play is called Fake Screen Pop.

The offense lines up in a trips (three receiver) formation and fakes the bubble screen to Luther Burden. The inside slot receiver, D.J. Moore, sets up like he’s sprinting out to deliver a block. At the last second, slips past the defender and runs straight down the hash marks. Caleb Williams pump-fakes to the bubble (Burden) and lofts a pop pass to a wide-open Moore for the game-winning touchdown. Again, that is just one of six notable fakes to one play. With Johnson’s creativity, there are countless possibilities.

Also, keep in mind that this was successful with Burden, who boasts 4.41 speed. Imagine what will happen when the Bears deploy Zavion Thomas, who is considerably faster. Hell, what will defenses do when the two players are lined up together? This is the vision Johnson had when the Bears drafted Thomas. The wrinkles he brings to the offense are numerous. He is not just a gadget player. He is a chess piece, and a deadly one at that. He brings an element the Bears didn’t have last year.

Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson isn’t stupid. He is a student of the game of football. Few have studied the intricacies of this sport and its history quite like he has. That is why he had plenty of criticisms about how the Bears performed last season despite going 11-6 and winning the division. Their defense was among the worst in the league in most categories. Quarterback Caleb Williams had the lowest completion percentage of any starting quarterback. The wide receivers were haunted by drop issues. It is a pretty extensive list.

They can’t expect to beat great teams in the playoffs with so many flaws. It falls on him and the coaching staff to clean it all up. However, there is another issue he has been reluctant to address publicly. Henry McKenna of Fox Sports touched on it in a recent interview with the Bears head coach. Amidst that magical run last season, one thing became apparent. The team always seemed to be trailing in the 4th quarter, and required a wild comeback. It happened seven times.

Is Ben Johnson concerned that it is unsustainable?

That includes making sense of all the Bears’ narrow victories and come-from-behind games. As impressive as that quality was for Chicago, it can also lead to regression. Look at the Kansas City Chiefs as a cautionary tale. They made the Super Bowl in 2024 with a run of 17 consecutive wins in one-possession games (a streak that started in 2023). But the Chiefs lost nine one-possession games in 2025 and finished 6-11.

As I tried to spit out a question about whether the Bears were worried about that same fate, Johnson, smiling wide, interrupted me.

“You think it was fluky? Is that what you’re getting at?” he asked me…

…But history has a way of repeating itself, and dramatic wins are often not sustainable. Johnson admitted he’s thought about that.

“It goes back to a term that I learned early as a coordinator called ‘unstable success,’” he told me.

This is a very real issue.

Usually, a reliance on late-game heroics means a team tends to get off to poor starts. They can’t lock in and focus for a full four quarters. Never a good sign. Below is a list of the ten teams that had the most 4th quarter comebacks in a single season. Of the nine who aren’t the Bears, only two improved their records the following season. Two others matched it. The rest regressed. Only one managed to win a Super Bowl.

This gives you an idea of what Ben Johnson and the Bears are up against. This problem hampered guys like Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlisberger. In those cases that teams overcame it, you’ll often find a good head coach was involved. Bill Belichick and Mike Vrabel certainly know what they’re doing. Johnson will face that same challenge.

Johnson knows what must be done.

Efficiency is the name of the game. If the Bears want to become a more normal winning team, they must learn how to take control of games early. That comes from scoring points on opening drives and getting stops early on defense. Such things require stacking first down, which in turn requires more completions and consistent block execution. It’s all part of the same machine. Ben Johnson knows there are still kinks to work out. Certain gears must be replaced. Oil is needed in a few spots.

The good news is the Bears were significantly better towards the end of last season than they were at the start. Johnson has seen this blueprint before. In 2023, the Detroit Lions were second in the NFL in 1st quarter points per game. That carried them all the way to the NFC championship game. The good news? Chicago was 6th last season. The bad news? They were 26th in 2nd quarter points. That means they scored early but couldn’t sustain it. This is what allowed opponents to jump ahead of them so often.

Fixing that will be the first order of business.

The Chicago Bears announced last week that they’ve shifted their focus to building their new stadium in Hammond, Indiana. It came in the wake of Illinois’ spring legislative session ending without a passed bill that would’ve given the team the property tax assistance it needs to build in Arlington Heights. With no signs of a resolution in sight, team president Kevin Warren and owner George McCaskey felt there was no other choice but to shift fully to Indiana. Lots of accusations are getting thrown around about who is to blame for this. That includes Governor JB Pritzker.

People close to the negotiations said his lackadaisical approach to the situation was a major factor in the situation spiraling out of control. Pritzker, for his part, has placed the blame on the Bears for constantly changing their message over the past four years, pivoting from one thing to another and failing to stick to a single, clear approach. Whatever the case, Pritzker knows he’s under pressure to do something. While the man didn’t admit any wrongdoing, a recent press conference saw him extend a lifeline that may rescue the team’s hopes of staying in Illinois.

JB Pritzker opened the door to a special session.

When asked about what he could do to get the Bears back to the table, the governor was careful with his words. He made it clear that the team has to work with its allies to get the state legislature on the same page. If they can do that, he’d be willing to do something that hasn’t happened in Illinois in almost a decade.

Call a special summer session of the legislature.

“If the legislature can get together on one piece of legislation, we absolutely could do that. But I think that there’s some time. We’ll see. But I think that there’s some time to do that. Of course, we’ll be in a session, as you know, about four or five months from now. And so it may be that.

And as you know, that these things, especially in Indiana, where they haven’t decided even on a location yet in Indiana, and the one principal location they’ve been focused on is one that has a lot of toxic waste and other things that they’ve got to remediate. So none of that is going to happen quickly, and I’m not suggesting that we want to wait. I’m just saying they’ve got to figure out how they can get the legislature, both sides, around the same bill and I would be happy to call a special session.”

The message here is impossible to miss.

Right after the spring bill push failed, it was made clear that no special session was planned. That meant the Bears would have to wait until at least the fall to have any chance of making another push. Even that felt unlikely, hence the pivot to Hammond. JB Pritzker spelled it out as clearly as any politician can. If the Bears can put together a piece of legislation that enough people in Springfield are on board with, the governor will bring the legislature back for a summer session to put it back on the debate floor.

The obvious question is whether the Bears can do that. They haven’t exactly demonstrated the capacity to build a coalition of support. Then again, their threat to leave for Hammond could be enough to bring enough decision-makers over to their side. It’s all about finding the right language in any bill that opponents can live with. If a special session is called, the team would have 30 days to close the deal.

What we don’t know for certain is how committed the Bears are to trying. They did say they’re looking forward to further negotiations, but Indiana leaders sound confident the deal is all but done. JB Pritzker likely sensed the same and knew he’d have to get a message across. Putting a special session on the table is a big deal. That would fall into a timeline the Bears would find more favorable. The last one in 2017 was called on June 21st and ran through July 6th. That is the window they probably want to shoot for.

There were plenty of reasons why the Chicago Bears defense underperformed last season. They were installing a brand new system under Dennis Allen, which almost always leads to issues. Pass rush was a persistent problem yet again. Montez Sweat was the only player with more than six sacks for the season. Run defense wasn’t much better. A big part of this was injuries. Several starters missed multiple games, and nowhere was it worse than the secondary. Kyler Gordon missed 14 games with various issues. However, the biggest blow suffered was to Jaylon Johnson.

Chicago’s star cornerback suffered a groin injury while training last summer, which forced him to miss training camp. When he did return early in the season, he tore his adductor muscle off the pelvic bone. That knocked him out for months. He finally returned in week 13, but it was clear he wasn’t himself. Johnson allowed career highs in completion percentage (72.7%) and yards per completion (16.0), and seemed to have lost some of his speed. It left some wondering what player the Bears would get going into this season.

Johnson didn’t waste time providing answers during minicamps.

A healthy Jaylon Johnson changes things for the Bears.

There is no question their pass defense is miles better when he is on the field and playing his best. Between 2023 and 2024, during his two Pro Bowl seasons, the Bears’ defense allowed 20 points or fewer 19 times. Last season, with him never fully 100%, they did it nine times. Only four happened during the 10 games he missed. Johnson’s impact can’t be overstated. If the Bears get the star version back this season, this defense could turn out to be significantly better than many predicted.

Nobody will be happier about that than Dennis Allen. If you look back at his best defenses in New Orleans, all of them were built around a top cover corner. Marshon Lattimore was the gold standard down there. Jaylon Johnson has that same capability. The interesting question is whether Allen might use him as a chess piece, following the opponent’s best receiver around the field. Considering the uncertainty around Gordon and Tyrique Stevenson, that might be the best course of action.

A Johnson bounce-back is most desirable.

After all, it already looks like significant changes could be on the horizon at cornerback for the Bears. Stevenson and Terell Smith are both free agents next spring. Gordon could be shipped out if he goes through another season battling preventable injuries. If Johnson were to continue his regression from last season, that might force the Bears to overhaul the entire position. His return to Pro Bowl form would at least provide them some stability as they potentially rework things a year from now.

Releasing Johnson next offseason would net the Bears $16 million in cap space. So it’s not like they have no incentive to do so. If you include other likely casualties like Dayo Odeyingbo and Grady Jarrett, you’re looking at $44.5 million in cap space. It seems Johnson is aware of this danger and fully intent on reminding everybody why he’s been the team’s best defensive player for the past four years.

The Chicago Bears had a problem from the outset. Their approach to hiring a new head coach in 2025 was smart. They had a talented young quarterback who needed development. That meant targeting the best possible coach with the expertise to do that. Ben Johnson was far and away the best candidate available. However, there was one major concern. Would the two take to each other? Williams’ style of play was nothing like what Johnson had become famous for during his rise to success in Detroit. It felt like oil and water. One person compared it to the disastrous Sean Payton-Russell Wilson situation in Denver.

Early on, there were signs of friction. Williams didn’t know where he stood. Johnson wasn’t used to coaching a quarterback like him. Some felt the coach would lose patience if things didn’t work out quickly last season. To his credit, Johnson would not go down that road without giving his relationship with Williams a genuine, honest effort. So, according to Henry McKenna of Fox Sports, the coach established a rigorous routine for the two of them that involved regular meetings filled with lots of communication and sometimes frank honesty.

Ben Johnson believes this approach turned everything around.

Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams established many routines in their first season together. One of Johnson’s favorites was their post-practice meeting. All season long, they’d finish their work on the field and, once Williams got out of pads and into street clothes, the Chicago Bears’ rookie coach and second-year quarterback would log anywhere from 60 and 90 minutes together in Johnson’s office…

…As Johnson tells it, those meetings had a cascading effect on the relationship between coach and QB. Everything improved: communication, repetition, execution.

“We’d meet the night before the game to go over his favorite calls, and to see how that went from early in the season to what it looked like at the end of the season, [it was] much more fluid,” Johnson told me. “We just saw the game so much more through the same lens as the year went on. I think all those quarterbacks saw that and witnessed that firsthand. So I think that was the coolest thing, just to see where it started to where it finished.”

Those meetings yielded incredible results.

Williams admitted that the iconic throw to D.J. Moore in overtime to beat the Green Bay Packers got its genesis in one of those meetings with Johnson. It became obvious down the stretch of last season that the two men were on the same page. They started seeing the game the same way. You often hear Williams say certain phrases that Johnson coined. It is difficult to remember the last time a Bears quarterback and head coach were so in sync. You might have to go all the way back to George Halas and Sid Luckman. Not even Mike Ditka and Jim McMahon had that sort of harmony.

This is a testament to Johnson as a coach. Coming into Chicago, many had labeled him as your classic nerd-type. He was focused on numbers and metrics, and on doing everything a specific way. That is great for a coordinator, but it can prove problematic for a head coach. There was a belief that Johnson didn’t have the communication talent that his mentor, Dan Campbell, did in Detroit. This story suggests those assumptions were way off base.

Things should only get better from here.

Don’t forget that the version of Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams we saw last season was the first draft, not the final product. Yet that version still managed 3,941 yards passing and 27 touchdowns. One is a franchise single-season record, and the other was just two short of it. Williams only completed 58% of his passes. Just imagine what might happen if he starts hitting more of those thanks to his growing comfort in Johnson’s system. The possibilities are truly limitless.

Those post-practice conversations are sure to be more detailed and nuanced than last year. We’ll likely see more big plays in games that originated from one of them. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to see some behind-the-scenes footage courtesy of 1920 Football Drive someday. Regardless, the most important relationship in Chicago sports has reached a solid foundation. Now they can start building something that hopefully one day becomes special.