Good, better, blast: McCaskey loved Bears’ 2025 season

This is the story of a 70-year-old Bears fan’s joy, a lifelong diehard still reveling in all the success from last season. All the magic. All the fun.

At times, he says, it felt like a dream.

In 106 years of franchise history, there has never been a season quite like 2025, one driven by an ambitious first-year head coach, repeatedly given style points by a flashy young quarterback and ultimately defined by an entire team’s belief in seizing moment after magical moment.

George McCaskey, who happens to be the grandson of George Halas plus the Bears’ chairman of the board, has ample perspective on such matters. And while it’s difficult to choose the starting point for soliciting his delighted reflections on a year that included an NFC North championship plus a run to the divisional round of the playoffs, it makes the most sense to start with the season’s final victory, a 31-27 triumph over the rival Green Bay Packers at Soldier Field.

It wasn’t just that the Bears trailed 21-3 into the second half before staging a city-shaking comeback punctuated by Caleb Williams’ 25-yard touchdown pass to DJ Moore with 1:43 remaining, but it’s also that the postgame passion poured out so powerfully in the Soldier Field locker room with that aforementioned new coach spouting emotion like an open fire hydrant.

In beginning his address to the team, Ben Johnson was downright juiced — adrenaline pumping, veins bulging and team cameras rolling — as he wound up and dropped this exclamation point on an iconic night in Bears history.

Man, f — the Packers! F — them! I f—— hate those guys.

McCaskey, one of 11 children in a devoted Catholic family so collectively averse to profanity that the Bears’ 2024 performance on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” contained no cursing, had to have blushed when he heard that sentiment.

He wasn’t there for Johnson’s eruption. “At the time, I was still collapsed in my son’s arms in the stands.” But McCaskey had already determined months earlier that he and Johnson were seeing eye to eye on how the young coach should lead the team. With fervor. With feeling. With nothing held back.

That’s why, at the conclusion of last week’s NFL annual meeting in Arizona, McCaskey playfully offered this: “I’ve spoken to Ben. And we’re on the same page.”

That was, by design, a slight variation of what Johnson said two days after the rousing playoff win when asked about the viral F-bomb that fanned the flames of such a storied rivalry.

“George and I have talked,” Johnson said. “And we’re on the same page.”

Truth be told, McCaskey says, he and Johnson haven’t ever talked about that specific occurrence and that very direct phrasing regarding the rival that McCaskey himself refers to as “Team Voldemort.” But that’s only because McCaskey gave his coach a bright green light early last season to let it all loose, however he felt compelled to.

In fact, McCaskey emphasizes, before Johnson’s supercharged “Good, Better, Best” postgame sermons became a cultural phenomenon in Chicago, he had seen a too-tame version after one of the Bears’ earliest wins last season.

“His postgame message was something like, ‘Well, golly gee, that was a daggum ringer, wasn’t it, fellas?'” McCaskey says with a laugh. “And I went to him and said, ‘Did somebody get to you?'”

McCaskey encouraged Johnson to remain authentic, offering his blessing for whatever that might look like, sound like or turn into. Thus, Johnson reacted to the franchise’s first playoff victory in 15 years with fiery invective.

And while McCaskey still feels an obligation to publicly absolve Johnson — “Here’s a news flash: Professional athletes curse and coaches of professional athletes curse” — before then offering a short soliloquy on his aversion to cameras in the locker room, the real question is whether one of Johnson’s most memorable moments in a season full of them elicited a proud fist pump from the boss.

“I don’t remember,” McCaskey says, smiling. “I was so emotionally drained after that game. And then after that win, all I did was watch the viral videos. DJ’s catch. All the fans (reacting). Have you seen the one with the guy with the sleeping baby?”

By now, every exhilarating montage of the 2025 Bears has been replayed by millions of Bears fans, including McCaskey, who himself still can’t get enough of the Week 16 Williams-to-Moore overtime touchdown connection — to beat the Packers, of course — set to Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.”

That sure beats reliving the 2024 implosion when, during the final game, fans at Soldier Field loudly chanted a request.

Sell the team! Sell the team!

In the playoffs this January, that same crowd literally shook the stadium with jubilation.

And yes, in a world in which content is everything and everything is content, McCaskey realizes he, too, was featured prominently in one celebration clip, in the tunnel of Paycor Stadium in Week 9 after the Bears’ jaw-dropping 47-42 win over the Cincinnati Bengals. Just moments after Colston Loveland’s winning 58-yard TD reception and right as Nahshon Wright sealed the win with a “Hail Mary” interception, McCaskey was captured high-fiving everyone in his path, offering an emphatic fist pump and howling with satisfaction as he ran back into the locker room.

“That’s an important lesson,” McCaskey says, “that cameras are everywhere.

“I went down to check on one of our injured players. And I thought I wasn’t going to be able to get back upstairs (for the conclusion of the game). So I wanted to see if something happened. Well, something certainly did happen.”

Those kinds of things kept happening. That ridiculous finish in Cincinnati was the third of seven Bears victories, including the playoffs, in which they trailed at some point in the final two minutes.

Williams offered all Bears fans a new feeling when it comes to clutch quarterback play. “We’re never out of it,” McCaskey says.

Plus, Johnson kept propelling his team to success and commemorating each win with his renowned “Good, Better, Best” exhortations.

That’s why, at the Bears’ annual group dinner on the final night of the spring meeting, McCaskey asked everyone in the 16-person party to single out a favorite moment from the season — no repeat selections allowed.

McCaskey was thrilled the Bears provided enough thrilling highlights to make that exercise hum. He also knew his “Favorite Moment Available” on the big board. It was Johnson’s first victory, 31-14 over the Dallas Cowboys in Week 3.

That was one of the year’s tamer triumphs. But in the moment, it came after an aggravating and somewhat jarring 0-2 start. And McCaskey was struck by the manner in which Bears players rewarded Johnson with the game ball.

“To see how they mobbed him and clapped him on the back, you saw the respect,” he says. “And what I saw was their genuine affection for their coach. That was pretty impressive.”

Eight months earlier, during the Bears’ video interview with Johnson for the job, McCaskey felt the coach’s energy and ambition jumping through the screen. He was confident that would become fuel, a unifying force. In the Soldier Field locker room in September, he saw it all coming to life.

The messaging of Johnson’s “Good, Better, Best” mantra resonated across Halas Hall. But that it spread — to Chicagoland classrooms, youth sports leagues, corporations and beyond — is extra gratifying to McCaskey. Not to overdramatize it, but there’s a human-condition element with components of aspiration, unity and desire mixed in.

The message is direct. Keep striving. Never settle.

So while the 2025 Bears season was good, better will require more. Thus, as the leaders inside Halas Hall work together, a 35-year franchise riddle needs solving. How can the Bears sustain the success?

General manager Ryan Poles already feels a hunger from players who he believes will remain a major catalyst. President and CEO Kevin Warren identifies direct and honest communication as a tool the Bears will continue using to pave the road ahead. And Johnson, true to form, continues pushing for nonstop urgency, wanting to attack improvement in every weight room session, meeting, walk-through and practice.

“I love Coach’s message,” McCaskey says. “I mean, days after the conclusion of the season, (it was) ‘That’s in the past; we’re moving forward.’ I don’t think we’ll have to worry about any complacency issues on Coach Johnson’s watch.”

In some ways, McCaskey’s old-school principles make him wish the Bears’ postgame celebration after their playoff win in January had remained private. But he’s also aware those days are long gone.

“It’s about capturing that raw emotion,” McCaskey says. “The league wants that postgame content. The teams want it. The Bears want it. And the fans want it.”

McCaskey included.

Thus those three words — F — the Packers — will live on, both as a moment in time for the organization and, quite frankly, as marching orders.

“They’ve had our number for far too long,” McCaskey says.

Perhaps now, he thinks, the tables are finally turning.

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