General manager Ryan Poles is not bad. He’s also not what you would call good. To date, his work on the Chicago Bears’ roster can best be called a mixed bag. He’s done very well on the offensive side, headlined by Darnell Wright, Joe Thuney, Caleb Williams, D’Andre Swift, Colston Loveland, and Luther Burden. On the other hand, his work on defense leaves much to be desired. None of his most prominent draft picks can be considered core members of the roster. So why is it like this? One issue that hasn’t really been touched on as he moves through his fifth season with the team is how he’s built his front office.

Brad Biggs of the Chicago Tribune wrote a column recently about head coach Ben Johnson. In it, he breaks down how he brought his coaching staff together. Most notably, the deliberate way he wanted to build it.

A primary theme at the outset of the offseason was that the Bears would coach better in 2026. Coaches always say if a player isn’t getting better, he’s getting worse. It stands to reason they can be held to a similar measuring system.

So much time was invested last year in learning one another and installing systems on both sides of the ball. Johnson was intentional in forming his staff. He didn’t want to fill it with only people he had worked with. He sought perspectives and ideas from coaches from different backgrounds and varied coaching trees.

Johnson brought in several coaches he had never worked with before. That is because he respected their reputations and the value they could bring to the table that he might not have thought of. Now, when you look at how Poles built his front office, the juxtaposition is stark. He pretty much took the opposite approach.

Ryan Poles brought in friends and familiar faces.

That was evident from the very beginning. His first major addition was Ian Cunningham, one of Ryan Poles’ best friends in the scouting community. Then he brought Trey Koziol in as co-director of player personnel. Poles, of course, worked with him for years in Kansas City. Not once did the Bears GM bring in an outside voice unaffiliated with him. The only other notable move was promoting Jeff King to co-director. He was already with the team before Poles arrived. One can’t help but question this approach.

Bringing in people you know makes sense in one aspect. It means you and they likely share the same vision on how to build a roster and what kind of players to seek. However, it also comes with one major drawback. Your friends are less likely to tell you no when you become zeroed in on certain players. Having that outsider voice can be so crucial in those situations, pointing you in a direction you may not have looked hard enough. Ryan Pace, of all people, took this approach by bringing in Joe Douglas in 2016.

He was said to be the loudest voice in pushing the Bears to draft both Cody Whitehair and Jordan Howard.

Poles stubbornly remains unwilling to seek outside opinions.

He had a big opportunity to do so after Cunningham left for Atlanta to become their general manager. Instead, the Bears simply promoted from within. King took over as assistant GM, and Koziol became senior director of player personnel. The team has not brought in a notable outside voice since D.J. Hord in 2024, and that was as a pro scout. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Eagles lured Douglas to their front office in 2025 after he was fired as the Jets’ GM. This year, they brought in another former Jets GM, Mike Maccagnan.

Is it a coincidence that the Eagles have consistently been one of the best drafting teams for the past several years? Their GM, Howie Roseman, never hesitates to bring in fresh faces with proven track records. Whatever it takes to improve the team’s scouting process. If Johnson learned the lesson from the moment he took over as head coach, why can’t Poles do the same?

Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson is a numbers guy. That goes back to his time at North Carolina, where he sought degrees in mathematics and computer science. It isn’t a surprise, in hindsight, that he became an advocate of advanced metrics as a coach. That made it somewhat odd that his primary focus for quarterback Caleb Williams was one of the old school stats. He wanted a 70% completion percentage. To him, the best QBs in the NFL hover around that line and tend to win a lot of football games.

Oddly simplistic, but hard to argue. Williams certainly didn’t meet the criteria last season, finishing with a disappointing 58.1 completion percentage. However, it’s possible that Johnson might’ve told a white lie. While the more completions are certainly important to him, Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports found out that it might not be the stat he’s actually focused on. It goes back to a strategy adopted by Bill Belichick during the New England Patriots dynasty years. Control the end of the 2nd quarter and the beginning of the 3rd quarter.

Ben Johnson wants Williams to save his best for that window.

It’s a term made popular by Bill Belichick, referring to the final four minutes of the first half combined with the first four minutes of the second half. It’s a magical window of time that can, theoretically, swing a football game.

Bears head coach Ben Johnson has put out the (perhaps fanciful) goal of quarterback Caleb Williams completing 70 percent of his passes. Talking heads will remind you each week that Chicago has never had a quarterback throw for 4,000 yards in a season. But inside the Bears, they’re focused primarily on that middle eight.

“If we can play quality football within structure in those moments, I think he’ll make a huge jump,” a Bears source, not authorized to speak with a reporter, told me recently…

…Last year Williams ranked No. 21 in the league in EPA/dropback within the middle eight — 0.07, just below the league average of 0.10 and well behind the league leader (Drake Maye, at 0.39).

There is evidence to back up this theory.

There were three games in which the Bears achieved their objective of scoring in the middle eight and preventing the opponent from doing so. The first was at home against Dallas, the second was in Minnesota, and the last was the wild card game against Green Bay. All three were wins. Belichick always understood that the middle eight was prime territory to build momentum. You use the final four minutes to get some points going into halftime. That generates a positive buzz as you regroup in the locker room. Then doing so again early in the 3rd tends to knock the wind out of the opponent’s sails.

What’s encouraging is that the Bears were actually pretty good at scoring in that zone. The common issue was that the opponent found ways to do so as well. This was due to a mixture of the offense not controlling the ball enough and the defense not getting off the field. Too many punts on one side and not enough on the other. Ben Johnson believes Williams is far more capable of leading more efficient drives going into his second year. The uncertainty is whether the defense can get stops.

Things finally make sense.

Yes. The completion percentage remains important. Johnson made that pretty clear when asked. However, this middle-eight metric aligns much more closely with his detailed way of thinking. The NFL is all about situational football. If you can master the most important areas of the clock during a game, you win most of the time. We already know the Bears have the final two minutes in the 4th quarter down to a near science. Next is shifting that success to earlier in the game. The end of the 1st half and the beginning of the 2nd are great places to focus.

Carolina will serve as the first test for this goal on Sunday. They’re another team that often struggled to control that part of the game. Like the Bears, they are aware of this problem. The team that takes advantage first will likely seize control of the game and maybe set the tone for their season. Johnson, emphasizing it throughout training camp, figures to give the Bears a slight advantage.

The Chicago Bears got the extension everybody wanted done. Darnell Wright, fresh off an All-Pro year, was locked up to a 4-year contract that makes him the highest-paid right tackle in football. Most thought that was the end of business for the Bears until next spring. They were wrong. With mere days to go before the season opener in Carolina, the team secured running back D’Andre Swift on a new three-year extension of his own, averaging just over $11 million per year. This comes after he put together a career-best season in 2025, rushing for 1,087 yards and adding 299 through the air. He scored 10 touchdowns.

On the surface, it’s the team rewarding a good player who still has gas in the tank. Swift is only 27 years old. He should have at least two more productive seasons in him before you start worrying about age and such. Yet there is more to it than that. By locking up Swift, the Bears have secured their entire offensive core through at least 2028. Only Cole Kmet becomes a free agent before that after 2027. Even if the team can’t keep him, they drafted his potential replacement this past April with Sam Roush.

This setup makes one thing clear. Next offseason’s focus has drastically narrowed.

D’Andre Swift now shifts the focus to defense in 2027.

The biggest complaint by far about the Bears’ roster construction to this point has been their heavy emphasis on offense in the 1st round of the draft. Since 2022, general manager Ryan Poles has held five such selections. Four of them have gone to the offensive side of the ball. Only one went to defense, and that was this year’s 25th overall pick, Dillon Thieneman. The Bears have tried to build that side of the ball with a mix of 2nd round picks and high-priced free agents. Results haven’t been favorable.

Kyler Gordon hasn’t stayed healthy for over a year. Jaquan Brisker left in free agency. Gervon Dexter was traded. Shemar Turner still hasn’t returned from a torn ACL. Only Tyrique Stevenson is set to play on opening day, and he was benched last year. Then you have expensive free agent additions like Dayo Odeyingbo and Grady Jarrett, who underperformed last year. Not to mention, there is safety Coby Bryant, who is already out with a knee injury. The Bears badly need to get serious about investing in that side of the ball.

That D’Andre Swift extension removes any further excuses.

Investing in the offense next spring would be a luxury.

Unless there is a serious injury or surprise retirement, the Bears have no glaring weakness they’ll have to address. Logan Jones is prepared to step in for Garrett Bradbury, who will be a free agent. Ozzy Trapilo is nearing his return at left tackle. They aren’t drafting a quarterback. Running back is no longer high on the priority list. Wide receiver? No. Tight end? Definitely not. Head coach Ben Johnson clearly doesn’t mind adding to the team’s strengths, but he’s also not naive. To win a championship, this team needs a strong defense, too.

That means the majority of next year’s draft and free agency decisions must be geared towards that aim. The Bears will have the resources to make it happen. They can free up significant cap space and will have all of their picks. It all comes down to whether Poles and his front office can finally land some true difference-makers. The offense is situated. They just need depth from this point. If the defense can get a big enough boost, this team will be chasing a championship next fall.

How do you teach somebody who’s achieved immense success doing a specific thing to do that specific thing less? This was the conundrum facing Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson after the 2025 season ended. Quarterback Caleb Williams had built his football career on improvisation and off-script plays. The dude is a wizard at them, pulling game-changing moments out of thin air. It’s a big reason the Bears survived so many close games to reach the playoffs. However, Johnson also knows Williams’ reliance on it may have cost the team some other opportunities.

Therein lay the issue. The head coach didn’t want to completely dissuade his quarterback from using that god-given ability. At the same time, he also knew that leaning on it too often could be detrimental to the overall execution on offense. So Johnson did what he does best. He ran the numbers. After compiling last season’s data, he sat down with his quarterback to review it. According to Jason Lieser of the Chicago Sun-Times, the findings were somewhat contradictory, but also painted a clear picture.

Ben Johnson needed Williams to pick his moments better.

Johnson isolated the 120 plays in which Williams broke the pocket and it turned into a free-for-all. That produced some of his most epic passes, but overall, less than 40% of the time he did that resulted in “good plays for us.”

That led to two key observations:

1. Johnson showed Williams instances in which it was completely unnecessary to scramble, and a simple sidestep would’ve allowed him to still hit the primary receiver on time.

2. Williams can be amazing on the fly, and Johnson needs to make better use of it.

“We’ll do some things a little bit different,” Johnson said. “He needs to be more accurate, sure, but we need our route runners to come alive to create separation for him also. As a coach, you’re dedicated to teaching the playbook, [but] we don’t want to fully shut that off. We see opportunity there. It’s not that we want to take those 120 plays down; I want to see that 40% go up.

Ben Johnson knows Williams faces the same challenge as other scramblers.

The trick isn’t to just stop scrambling. That would be a foolish waste of an obvious gift. The trick is learning when to scramble and when to hang in the pocket. It sounds simple, but it isn’t easy. Such a balancing act is incredibly difficult to learn. Plenty of great scramblers never really mastered the art of balancing the two. Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Steve Young, and John Elway are such examples. However, for each of them, there’s a Justin Fields, Bobby Douglass, Kordell Stewart, and Michael Vick.

All of those guys were incredible runners. They dropped jaws seemingly every week. However, that style of play has a shelf life. You lose speed as the seasons pile up. Your body also takes more hits than normal. That is why you see such quarterbacks flame out by their early 30s. Ben Johnson doesn’t want that to happen. It is why his mission remains teaching Williams situational football. Running is fine, but only do it when left with no other choice or if the play call specifically calls for it. Don’t do it just to do it.

Johnson has the right perspective.

The solution isn’t telling Williams to just reduce the number of scrambles. That is counterproductive. It would merely force the quarterback to put a leash on himself. No, the goal must be improving the efficiency. Make sure more of those 120 plays result in positive outcomes. Sometimes it’s taking a short pass rather than seeking an explosive. Sometimes it’s take it himself. Then there are times when you just sidestep the pressure, trust your protection, and find the open man.

If Williams does the latter a few more times each game, he’ll learn to appreciate it more. That is what Johnson is counting on. It will keep the quarterback healthier and make the times he does scramble even tougher to defend, since opponents won’t be able to predict them as easily. Meanwhile, it’s on the coaches to make sure others on the offense are doing their part to make those scramble moments more fruitful by working themselves open or coming back to the ball.

The Chicago Bears will travel to Carolina for their season opener against the Panthers on Saturday. Most people you ask feel this game will probably be closer either way. Both teams were in the playoffs last season. The Bears appear to have the slight quarterback advantage and more offensive firepower. Carolina is well-coached offensively and will have home field advantage on what should be a hot day. In these situations, it’s interesting to hear what the experts think. Former head coach Jon Gruden certainly has an opinion.

He has studied both teams intensively in recent weeks and last season. One thing became clear to him right away. The Panthers defense might not be ready for the Bears’ rushing attack. He feels the powerful tandem of Jonah Jackson and Darnell Wright, along with head coach Ben Johnson’s diverse scheme, will give Carolina’s front seven fits. Especially their linebackers. It isn’t just the linemen and running backs they need to worry about. Few are better than Johnson at using wide receivers to create openings.

Jon Gruden is right to point this out.

It doesn’t guarantee a Bears victory, mind you. Nothing does. However, it’s worth noting the factors involved. Carolina was 20th against the run last season. Even that number is heavily skewed. They allowed at least 100 yards on the ground in 10 of their final 11 games last season. This is an ongoing issue for Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero. His run defense has been bad every year in Carolina, and it’s been especially bad against well-coached running games. Buffalo had 245 yards last season. Jacksonville had 200. Los Angeles and San Francisco both cracked 140.

Johnson wasn’t impressed by Evero when they last met in 2023, either. His Detroit Lions offense piled up 159 yards on the ground. It probably would’ve been worse if Detroit hadn’t built such a formidable 35-10 lead by the 4th quarter. Granted, Carolina is a better team than the one from three years ago. Yet the points remain valid. The Bears railroaded some pretty good run-defending opponents last season, like San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore. The Panthers better be prepared. Jon Gruden isn’t sure how, though.

The Bears are going to play their game.

As much as they’d love to come out slinging it with Caleb Williams, that isn’t their game. This team’s success comes through the ground attack. D’Andre Swift just inked a fresh contract extension. He had an outstanding training camp. He had a great game against the Panthers when he saw them two years ago. It feels like the only thing stopping the Bears from playing well is themselves. If they come out sluggish, Carolina could use that to pounce early. A quick double-digit lead would force the Bears to lean more on the passing game.

This is the NFL. Anything can happen. Maybe Carolina’s pricey additions this offseason do the job. It just feels like the matchup favors the Bears, at least in this category. They feel they can run on anybody. Nothing about this Panthers defense should have them nervous. If Johnson digs into that playbook, he’s going to find an opening. We all know what follows when that happens.

One thing that is unquestioned about Ben Johnson since he became head coach of the Chicago Bears is his honesty. Some may call it bluntness. The bottom line is that Johnson doesn’t believe anybody gets better at what they’re trying to do unless they’re told the truth. That is one vow he made to his players from the moment he took over last year. He would never lie to them. The first and probably most memorable instance of this came after the Bears’ ugly 52-21 loss to the Lions in Detroit last September.

He didn’t mince words, stating that he felt the team’s practice habits did not “reflect a championship-caliber team.” That is a polite way of saying the players didn’t want it enough. If they really wished to win and chase rings, then they’d better learn how to make sacrifices. Nothing can substitute for hard work. Fast forward almost a full year, and Johnson was asked why he seemed so optimistic about the team’s chances this season. After all, most experts have the Bears taking a step backward in 2026.

Johnson summed it up by returning to that quote from a year ago.

“Here’s what I’m excited about —how hard they are working. Last year, I said we were not practicing at a championship level. I am not saying that now.”

Ben Johnson doesn’t hand out compliments like that willingly.

The Bears’ head coach has the highest possible standard for this team. He will not praise you unless he feels you’re rising to meet it, both in practice and games. Everything coming out of Halas Hall over the past month and a half suggests the players arrived with a far more focused mindset. It felt like a team that knows it should’ve advanced further into the playoffs than it did. They let a winnable game get away. Now they’re focused on finishing what they started. To get there, it starts in training camp. If you don’t put in the work, you’ll never reach the mountaintop.

It isn’t just Ben Johnson making those demands anymore. Several veteran leaders stepped up at various points throughout camp to push teammates to go harder. First, it was Cole Kmet and Kalif Raymond. Then it was Jaylon Johnson and Grady Jarrett. The message was the same.

Not good enough. They needed to do better, go harder. Nobody complained. Everybody put their heads down and kept grinding. It’s little wonder Johnson is so encouraged. The last time he saw a team reach that level of focus, it came a quarter away from the Super Bowl in 2023.

The talking is over now.

Chicago needs to see if that hard work will pay off. Many people remain skeptical that the Bears can take a step forward this year. They lost a lot of key contributors on defense from last season. D.J. Moore, their big offensive hero, was traded. When things like that happen, teams tend to backslide. Johnson doesn’t seem concerned about that. He has an ascending quarterback in Caleb Williams and several exciting weapons on offense. Scoring shouldn’t be a big issue for this team if everybody stays healthy.

The defense doesn’t have to be great. All it has to do is not be terrible. If that objective gets accomplished, this team is very much a threat in the NFC. The Bears have been insisting for weeks that they feel they’re good enough. Opening day in Carolina will be their first chance to prove it. If they take care of business convincingly, skeptics may have no choice but to take them seriously.