Behind the scenes for a day with Bears coach Ben Johnson

It’s shortly before 5 a.m. on Aug. 4, and the Chicago Bears offices are dark.

Then Ben Johnson walks into his suite, and there is light.

Yes, this is technology.

But energy, too, definitely energy.

There is enough to light his office and more, enough to make a great city shine a little more brightly.

Johnson shows up neither with sleep in the corners of his eyes nor bags beneath them. He removes his Chicago Blackhawks cap and replaces it with a retro B Bears logo cap as Vance Joy plays. There is no yawn in his song.

He usually gets five hours of sleep this time of year, and that suffices. Johnson can function with four, which he normally settles for once the games begin. His alarm is set for 4:30, but he usually wakes well before then, thinking about how his Chicago Bears can redefine greatness.

The Bears’ head coach is amped about today’s practice, more so than usual because there will be two live periods — the first time his team will play real football since its playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams last January. Last night, he made it understood to coaches, offensive players and defensive ones that chin straps had best be buckled because he will be setting a tone by calling mostly runs.

Many NFL coaches don’t go live anymore, but Johnson learned from Dan Campbell when he was Campbell’s offensive coordinator with the Detroit Lions. And besides, if Campbell is going live, Johnson believes the Bears need to do the same if they want to finish ahead of the Lions in the NFC North.

After winning the North in his first season as a head coach last year, Johnson has higher aspirations. Much higher.

“You’ve got 31 other teams coming to training camp saying, ‘Our goal is to win the Super Bowl,'” he says. “I want more than that. I want to have the highest-scoring offense ever, which happens to be the 2013 Denver Broncos. I know how many points per game they scored (37.9), and I want to surpass them. I want shutouts. I want blowouts.”

He asks which team has the most consecutive victories. It’s the New England Patriots, who won 21 straight between 2003 and 2004.

“Why can’t we do that?” he says. “There has never been an undefeated season (since teams have been playing more than 14 regular-season games). The moon is the Super Bowl, but we’re shooting beyond that, for the stars. And I want these players to feel that each and every single day they come in.”

Assuredly they do. As does everyone else in his presence at Halas Hall, which, on this day, includes a reporter.

On a 14-hour training camp day, The Athletic shadowed the fascinating Ben Johnson.

5:45 a.m.: Workout

In the private locker room in his office, Johnson changes into workout gear. He does 12 warm-up push-ups before heading downstairs.

Anyone who has felt the laser-beam stare will tell you about his intensity.

You can see it on the fleshy part of his left hand, where there is a lump that came from rubbing it with his right thumb. His mother sends him stress balls that he bounces and squeezes throughout the day. Bears cornerback Tyrique Stevenson gave him a fidget spinner.

That intensity is clear after games, whether he is brushing past the opposing coach who happens to work on the wrong side of the state border, or galvanizing his troops with a “Good, better, best!” speech. It was especially plain to see in his performance after a November victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, when he removed his shirt, which meant free hot dogs in Chicago.

If the giveaway glizzies weren’t part of the deal, we never would have been exposed to Johnson’s washboard, he says. He was uncomfortable with the spotlight he found himself in, but he understands the value of sharing on ChicagoBears.com.

“The No. 1 thing is we are here to win,” he says. “But we’re also a part of the entertainment industry. And I think part of what we sign up for with these jobs is doing things for our fanbase, getting them excited about what we are doing. That goes into why we do some things that might sparkle and shine on game day, things that draw attention to our guys in a positive way that our fans can enjoy.”

There is no better place to feel the Johnson intensity than in the Clyde Emrich Weight Room at Halas Hall. He starts with 15 minutes of intervals on a treadmill and follows with 30 minutes of weight training. With Bears strength coach Pierre Ngo’s guidance, Johnson focuses on Olympic lifts — power cleans, squats and bench press. Today, he gets up to six reps with 250 pounds on the bench. The other day, he squatted 400 pounds.

He’s been working out six days a week, and he’s as strong as he’s been since he was a walk-on quarterback at North Carolina 20 years ago. Once the games begin, he will cut back to two workouts a week when the Bears are at home and one workout when they’re on the road.

By January, he usually loses about 10 pounds. But since he gifted Chicago with those hot dogs, Johnson has put on 10 pounds, and they are good pounds.

He won’t be taking off his shirt again, he says. But just in case, he gets in some bicycle crunches.

6:45 a.m.: Breakfast

Johnson sits in a quiet area of the cafeteria with scrambled eggs and a biscuit, both covered in gravy, and a bowl of fruit. The sprint to the end of the season has begun, and he won’t have many opportunities for reflection. This is one of them.

It was a different year than any that preceded it for Johnson. He was a finalist for NFL Coach of the Year in February, but he turned down an invitation to attend NFL Honors in San Francisco.

Instead, he, his wife, Jessica, and their daughters, Emory, 9, and Halle, 3, and son Kennedy, 7, went to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He and Jessica turned 40 in May, so in June, the couple went to California’s wine country, their first vacation alone since Emory was born. The family also spent time in North Carolina, where Ben and Jessica have roots. Mostly, though, they enjoyed the Chicago area, hanging at a coffee shop and a North Shore beach on Saturday mornings.

Johnson may be a rock star to Bears fans, but he hasn’t had to go incognito like one because he blends in easily among the people. In June, he attended a bachelor party weekend in Chicago for Connor Barth, his teammate at North Carolina and a former Bears kicker. He left Barth and their friends in the afternoon and walked from the Chicago River to Soldier Field to meet some of his assistants for a Morgan Wallen concert. Johnson went unrecognized until just before he entered the stadium.

Ted Crews, special adviser to the president, apologizes for interrupting breakfast. He explains that defensive coordinator Dennis Allen is meeting the media soon, and it is expected he will be asked about safety Coby Bryant, who left practice injured the day before. No one from the team has given a status update on Bryant, but it has been reported he will miss eight to 10 weeks. Crews and Johnson discuss how Allen should handle inquiries, agreeing he should avoid specifics.

Crews leaves, and Johnson takes a bite of eggs.

It’s clear that all the planets at Halas Hall revolve around Johnson. He could act like a king, but Johnson is approachable to the point that cafeteria workers feel comfortable small-talking with him. And when he converses with them, he is fully present.

A lesson in humility from 2019 stays with Johnson. During a good run as an assistant with the Dolphins, he thought the arrow was pointing up on his career. Then he was a casualty of a regime change. He was out of work for seven months — the worst time of his life, he calls it.

Now, Johnson understands that one day, his corner office overlooking the practice fields will have another nameplate outside of it, and all he has worked for will be gone. So he’s determined to give whatever he can while he can.

“I’m completely happy with the thought that this is my last job,” he says. “It’s the best job I’ve ever had. I love it to death, and the day I get let go from here, I will have given everything I had to it, and whatever was meant to be will be.”

He puts his plate in the bin for dirties. At the coffee bar, he finds former Bears coach Dave Wannstedt, now a radio and television commentator. They chat for a few minutes about Butch Davis, a former co-worker of Wannstedt’s and coach of Johnson’s, quarterback accuracy and the differences between Caleb Williams and the quarterbacks Wannstedt coached in Chicago.

“Anything you need, let me know,” Wannstedt says.

8:30 a.m.: Practice

Johnson hopes his team will practice today the way it has been practicing, with competence and purpose. Then he will reward his players by having a walkthrough on Wednesday.

As he prepares in his office, he gets a call. It’s Emory, who fractured her finger last week.

“Does your finger hurt?” he asks.

“You’re coming to practice, right?”

“See you in a bit. Bye-bye, love you.”

NFL officials are here to work the practice. Johnson reviews their names before heading out.

He takes the long walk to the far fields behind Halas Hall. As he gets closer, fans yell his name and give him a few “Good, better, bests!” He acknowledges them all and stops for a couple of photos and autographs. Johnson appreciates these people.

As he walks, he thinks about the playoff games last winter and how fans like these made so much sound that Soldier Field trembled. He goes back in his mind — downtown buildings lit up orange and blue, Jim Cornelison singing the national anthem, snow flurries falling — and gets chills.

“I will never forget it,” he says.

Practice does not go as Johnson hoped. In the live team period, four of seven plays in one stretch are marred by pre-snap penalties. Execution is inconsistent.

Johnson mostly contains his frustration. But when referee Carl Cheffers waves his flag but doesn’t blow his whistle to stop the clock at the end of a play during the two-minute period, Johnson yells at him, exhorting him to treat it like a game.

After practice, he finds his family and throws around a football with Kennedy. They take a cart ride back to Halas Hall.

“We love you, Ben!” fans yell.

Smiles and waves.

After saying goodbye to his family, he walks into the building, and the mood shifts.

“Practice stunk,” he says.

Johnson feels bad about yelling at Cheffers. “Should I apologize to Carl?” he asks an assistant.

He stops for a coffee. It’s his second of the day, not including a cold brew. He’ll have one more later. This is the time of year when he’s fresh. By December, it will be six cups of coffee and a cold brew daily.

Johnson’s first NFL job was working for former Dolphins head coach Joe Philbin. Philbin pointed out he was being moody. Johnson realized it was because his energy levels were fluctuating. And he also figured out that players pick up on coaches’ energy levels.

“Everyone will go how we go as coaches,” he says. “We need to elevate the building. I do the best I can to lead the charge and be consistent and positive.”

11 a.m.: Offensive staff meeting

In a two-hour review of the practice tape, Johnson mostly asks questions of his 13 offensive assistants.

“Did they want to practice today?” he says.

They aren’t so sure. “I need everyone to speak up a bit,” Johnson says.

Johnson is proud of these coaches and thinks they are excellent at what they do. He wants to grow them. That’s one reason he has reimagined his role.

In his first year, Johnson was focused mostly on the development of Williams, offensive game planning and play calling, as well as making sure his vision for the team was understood. In Year 2, he plans to be more connected with the defense and special teams.

“I took this job because I wanted all of it,” says Johnson, who points out he rarely fields media questions about the Bears defense or special teams.

That is not to say he will drift from his offensive superpowers. As a young man, he told himself that when he grew up, he wanted to be an offensive coordinator, not a head coach. His first football love was play calling, and he believes it will be his last. He became a head coach, he says, out of “curiosity about myself as opposed to ambition.”

When the season begins, Johnson plans to have rotating offensive assistants lead staff meetings the nights after games to preview the next opponent.

He also wants to spend more time on game management, partly because of how he handled the Bears’ 20-17 overtime loss to the Rams in the divisional round of the playoffs.

“I kick myself when I think about that game,” he says.

Given his respect for Rams coach Sean McVay, MVP quarterback Matthew Stafford and the top-scoring offense in the NFL, Johnson anticipated a shootout. He was mentally unprepared to downshift to a more conservative attack to account for 25-mph winds, a wind chill of four below and snow. He regrets not attempting a field goal in the first quarter on fourth-and-2 from the Rams’ 21. Williams was intercepted on the play.

“I should have changed the mindset,” he says. “I know now that the power of Soldier Field, particularly at that time of year, is a real thing. And it should be a major advantage for us, provided we recognize it and play with a certain style.”

In the offseason, he met once a week for breakfast with Harrison Freid, the team’s director of research and analysis. Each meeting, they studied every critical game-management decision from one week of the 2025 season — often about 200 plays — then decided what they would do if faced with the same situations.

As the tape plays, Johnson’s concerns about what he saw in practice are confirmed. He is not happy seeing so many offensive players step on one another. Communication issues are disappointing. He is especially perturbed by a play in which Williams — who had been outstanding in five previous practices — is intercepted by Stevenson.

“I told him during stretch you have to keep your eye on the corner, that he might fall off,” Johnson says. “Terrible. Who is he throwing this to? And the cover is dogs —. The 33-year-old (guard Joe Thuney) is the only one even in the frame.”

Johnson, though, doesn’t want his meetings to feel like doctors discussing cancer treatments. He finds some levity when rookie defensive tackle Jordan van den Berg takes a swing at rookie guard Caden “The Vanilla Gorilla” Barnett, and then body-slams him.

“It’s pure cinema,” Johnson says. “We should put a camera on the two of them all day.”

As the meeting winds down, he asks the coaches what they thought.

“Sloppy,” one says.

“Out of shape,” says another.

“Have to work on details,” adds a third.

Even though the practice effort was not reward-worthy, Johnson tells his staff he is still considering a light practice tomorrow. He asks what they think, and no one says it’s a bad idea.

Later, he asks for opinions from defensive coordinator Dennis Allen, special teams coach Richard Hightower, general manager Ryan Poles and Freid.

2:15 p.m.: Walkthrough

Johnson oversees the offense in the Walter Payton Center, paying particular attention to Williams. Away from everyone else, they talk.

Johnson wants Williams to see the same game Johnson sees as the play caller, which can only happen if something deeper than strategies is shared between them. During the season, they meet one-on-one for between one and two hours every day. In training camp, they are meeting only on the days when there is no practice. Mostly, Johnson stays away from the daily positional meetings for quarterbacks.

“If I go into the quarterbacks room and I’m hard on the starting quarterback, it typically breeds resentment more than it helps,” he says. “But you can break down barriers if it’s just the two of us and we can go back and forth and tell each other our versions of the truth. That’s where our defense mechanisms come down. And Caleb is extremely coachable. I wasn’t sure about that when I came here.”

Before Johnson was Williams’ coach, he heard the questions.

Is accuracy a problem?

Could he play within a structured offense?

Does he lack sufficient processing speed?

Johnson wasn’t sure then. He is now.

“I don’t have any concerns in those areas,” Johnson says. “He showed it to me. Now it’s just a matter of time.”

The quarterback-coach relationship is very different from what it was in Detroit, where Johnson became a confidant of Jared Goff’s when Goff was struggling with a transition from the Rams, and Johnson was a tight ends coach. They became so interconnected that Goff was a primary reason Johnson shied away from head coaching opportunities in 2023 and 2024. They still text frequently, sometimes in a chain with former Lions center Frank Ragnow.

By the time Goff became Steve Jobs to Johnson’s Steve Wozniak, Goff already had played six seasons, been to one Super Bowl and two Pro Bowls. Johnson is trying to help Williams get to where Goff was then.

In the regular-season finale last year, the Bears defense threw an unusual look at Goff. Johnson thought it was a learning opportunity for Williams, so he showed him the play and gave him the solution. It was a brief conversation. Johnson didn’t emphasize it and didn’t think it would be an issue for Williams anytime soon, let alone the next game. But it was. And Williams was ready. He recognized the look and threw the ball right where he was supposed to. A receiver didn’t have it down like Williams did, however, and the route bust resulted in an interception. But Johnson thought it was Williams’ “best interception of the season” because it showed how locked in his quarterback was.

“He sees it like a challenge, like he’s going to be ready for the opportunity — that’s what’s really cool about him,” Johnson says. “But then there are some things that you really have to stay on him about, drill it 100 times.”

After the walkthrough, Johnson detours to congratulate offensive tackle Darnell Wright on his just-signed four-year, $116 million contract extension. Johnson bro-hugs him and says, “You earned it.” Wright wants more and asks his coach when Johnson will deliver on his promise of getting Wright a touchdown. It’s coming, Johnson says.

Outside Johnson’s office, manager of football communications Danny Markino is waiting with a news release about the contract that Johnson needs to approve before it can be sent out. Johnson gives his OK, sits at his desk and checks to see if “Pro Football Talk” has the news before the news release is distributed. It does.

“They find out before I do sometimes,” he says.

5:15 p.m.: Team meeting

Bears quarterbacks, Williams, Case Keenum and Tyson Bagent, sit front row center. The meeting begins with a pitchy but confident performance of “Candy Rain” by defensive tackle Jayden Loving, part of rookie initiation. Cheffers and the officials give a presentation on new rules.

Then Johnson takes the microphone.

Before he addresses his team, Johnson spends significant time in contemplation. Throughout the offseason, he gathers nuggets that could be pertinent at some point. Then he prepares PowerPoint presentations.

He learned from Campbell that players either want to be informed or entertained — anything else is a waste of words. Longtime NFL assistant Joe Vitt taught him that you need at least twice as much time to prepare a speech as it takes to give one, so Johnson’s usual 15-minute talk takes a half-hour or more to put together.

Johnson shows practice tape and notes the defensive execution. Then Johnson, who embodies the spirit of his storied franchise better than anyone who has sat in his chair since the legendary Mike Ditka, hammers home what he wants his team to be about.

“Toughness, toughness, toughness,” he says, showing a definition on a slide. “As an individual, it could be described as reaching or exceeding your physical ability every time you step on the field, all right? What I’m concerned about as the head coach is what is a physical football team? And this is what it comes down to. How well do you run the football? How well do you stop the run? Short-yardage situations, goal-to-go situations … three-and-outs on defense, tackling on defense, big plays, all right? That’s what defines toughness in a team.”

Repeatedly, Johnson has told his players never to dive for a pylon unless it’s a fourth down or a 2-point conversion attempt. But in an earlier practice, rookie wide receiver Zavion Thomas disregarded the rule. In the meeting that followed, Johnson broke up the team with an AI-generated slide of Thomas diving for the pylon while flipping off the camera.

He had another AI idea for this meeting and enlisted offensive quality control coach Zach Cable to help.

Johnson asks the team to think of some of the toughest sports they have ever seen. Then he talks about Power Slap and shows the team his top knockouts in Power Slap, counting down from five to one.

His top Power Slap is a surprise. It’s one combatant knocking out another, but the slapper has van den Berg’s face superimposed on his, and the slapee has the Vanilla Gorilla’s face.

Players crack up.

Johnson tells them he’s going to adjust the schedule and ease up in practice tomorrow. They will wear shells instead of pads, and the team portion of the day will be a walkthrough.

“You guys like the plan?” he says. They do. “Here we go.”

5:30 p.m.: Offensive meeting

The tone Johnson sets in this meeting is different. It’s heavier.

Johnson doesn’t have praise for anyone as he shows the practice tape. Even tight end Colston Loveland, whom Johnson considered “the No. 1 guy in the (2025) draft for us in terms of being everything we want to be about,” draws his wrath.

“Got a chance for a big play right here, 84,” he says, showing a play in which Loveland is knocked off his route by a defender. “You can’t do it, man. You got to stay on your feet. You got to fight through contact. You’re too good. We’re counting on you, all right?”

Then he gets to the Stevenson interception of Williams that bothered him in the meeting. He raises his volume and spits his words.

This is a different Ben Johnson than you’ve ever seen.

“I f—— hate this clip. More than anything. All right? I f—— hate it. It’s not what we’re about. All right? It’s a s — play. He’s not open, all right? It’s a bad interception. And what I see, I see f—— 11 guys moping. That’s what I see. Someone tell me I’m wrong. Anybody in the room? The one guy that’s closest to the football at the end of the play is our 33-year-old guard. There should be 11 guys in the f—— frame right now.”

Somehow, his delivery is both calculated and from the heart, and it shakes the room.

He dismisses the offense by telling these players they will have an opportunity for redemption in another live period before their preseason opener Saturday. And he warns them that the tape had better not look like today’s.

Before a 7:45 p.m. staff meeting and some work on tomorrow’s install, Johnson stops by Poles’ office for one more brief review of the day.

And as the sun begins to set over a building that is mostly empty, the coach of the Bears offers a reminder that it will indeed rise again.

“We’ll start over tomorrow,” he tells Poles, still bringing energy.

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