Bears show off their Johnson
Bears coaches in the past have managed to botch their introductory press conference. Ben Johnson nailed his.

After a whirlwind 96 hours that started with Ben Johnson's Lions crapping out in the divisional round of the playoffs and ended with him inexplicably being handed a jersey with his name and a number on it, he is, we're pretty sure, the new head coach of the Bears.
I guess the Bears were envious of the awkward moment that always happens when a baseball team hires a new manager and makes him put on a jersey (that he will rarely actually wear) over his suit, so they found a way to replicate it in football form. I guess it beats handing him a jock strap.
Every Bears' press conference has to have some weirdness, and other than the strange jersey thing this one didn't really have any.
Ben Johnson was short on stories about how he used to work for a realtor who made him promise to be a football coach some day, he didn't have any terribly forced acronyms to attempt to explain, he didn't tell us that he'll start every training camp by holding up an oblong spheroid and saying, "This is a football," and he wasn't sitting at the dais thumbing through a fishing boat catalog while waiting to speak.
Instead, Ben gave off a very strange vibe for a Bears coach.
Confidence. Competence.
He played all the hits of course. He thanked George McCaskey, presumably for approving the large pile of cash he's getting. He thanked Kevin Warren who didn't speak during the formal press conference, but did stand in the back of the room trying to get people to sign a petition to tear down the Field Museum to create a parking lot that fans could pay $140 to park and tailgate in. "It will be the classiest piece of asphalt this side of The Louvre's service entrance!"
And Johnson talked about how much he was looking forward to working with Ryan Poles, and regaled us all with a story about how they just missed each other at Boston College where they were both grad assistants one year apart. Johnson said he heard lots of stories about Ryan, most of them about how he never paid his parking tickets.
The feeling you got from listening to him was that he's been planning to be a head coach for a long time. He's like a woman who started planning her wedding when she was 12, and 20 minutes after her boyfriend finally proposes to her she wheels in a 75 pound binder of wedding ideas she's been working on for 15 years. "What do you think about taffeta? I know! I love it, too!"
The closest thing to talking trash he did was to talk about how much fun it is "to beat Matt LaFleur twice a year."

And he finished it up by pandering to us so hard he nearly blew out a hammy, and we loved it.
I get goosebumps right now just thinking about being the head coach of the Chicago Bears. I know exactly what this role and this responsibility requires, and I cannot wait to get to work.
I'm going to need to sit down for a minute.
And here was a fascinating answer he gave to Jason Leiser's question about how important it was to pick a team with a good quarterback.
Where I see my role is as a supporter of him, this offense will be calibrated with him in mind. We're gonna build this thing, this is not simply a dropping of a previous playbook down on the table and starting there, no, we're ripping this thing down to the studs and we're gonna build it up with him first and foremost and then with the pieces around him next. I really look forward to challenging him.
The whole answer is great, but check out the bold part. The Flus was obsessed with turnover ratio, to the point that he tried to coach taking chances out of Caleb. It was the biggest thing he emphasized. Don't turn the ball over. We'll get takeaways on defense and if you don't turn it over we'll win.
That's not a terrible concept, but it's counterproductive when you draft a talented quarterback and basically spend his first year (or at least the part of it you survived) emphasizing not throwing picks over making plays. Caleb only threw six interceptions as a rookie, which is nice. But maybe it would have been better if he'd thrown twice that many? How many more big plays would the Bears have generated if the offense wasn't overemphasizing protecting the ball at all costs? Gee, maybe if they'd been more aggressive with their playcalling they'd have lost more games? Uh oh. They lost 12 the safe way.
What Johnson means by "quarterback success" is making plays, not just avoiding mistakes. And it's not like Caleb has ever been a turnover machine. During the draft process last year people made a huge deal out of his three interception game at Notre Dame. You know how many other interceptions he threw that entire season?
Two!
Five interceptions was his career high in college. He threw 14 picks on 1,099 career pass attempts. So yeah, I think the new guy will have just a little more trust in him.
And the second part of that answer, about how he's not just bringing the Lions playbook and installing it is exactly what you want to hear. The Bears don't have the Lions players. The best coaches take their basic concepts and tailor their offense to their roster.
It's why Matt Nagy's snippy, "I didn't come here to run the I formation" thing pissed me off so much. Well, you came here to win games, so you should run whatever the fuck works.
It is funny that two of Johnson's biggest influences are former Bears' offensive coordinators. He worked with Adam Gase, who actually did a very nice job in his one season as OC with the Bears. And he clearly learned a lot from him.
But he also talked a lot about John Shoop, and no Bears fan has good memories of that guy. Shoop was the Bears offensive coordinator for four seasons. He would like to think he's best remembered for the 2001 Bears who won 13 games and Anthony Thomas was the offensive rookie of the year, but he's not. Even if he were, that '01 team's offense was nothing to write home about. They ranked 26th in total yards, 24th in passing yards and 17th in rushing yards.
What he is best remembered for, at least by me, was saying that one of his goals on third down was to put the punter in better position. I mean, it was practical especially given the QBs he coached (which included Kordell Stewart, Henry Burris, Jim Miller, Shane Matthews, the great Corey Sauter and the first three games of Rex Grossman's career), but not exactly the kind of "relentless attack" you want to hear your OC talking about.
Johnson hinted pretty strongly that he had his eye on the Bears' job a year ago when they decided to give The Flus another year for...reasons, and it likely played into his decision to bail on the Commanders' interview. I mean, he seems pretty smart, I'm sure he knew Eberflus wasn't going to see year four. The fact that he had a sideline seat for the end of that era had to be pretty gratifying for him.
He also says Poles was a reason he took the job. The Bears actually do have a fair amount of talent on the roster. On Waddle and Silvy yesterday, Lions' radio announcer (and former Packer and Lion) TJ Lang said that while the Bears do need an upgrade on the offensive line, the Lions thought their o-line struggles had as much to do with poor coaching and scheme as it did a lack of talent.
Well, at least the Bears had a well rounded suck at that position.
Johnson also said part of the reason the Bears were attractive to him is that his brother, despite living in New York, has Cubs season tickets, and every summer Ben and his family would come to town for part of a homestand. His brother's in New York but has Cubs season tickets? Is it Barstool Big Cat?
Four Bears' players showed up at the press conference. Caleb, Rome Odunze and DJ Moore were there to meet the new coach. Cole Kmet was probably there to cover it for Chuggo since they fired their actual beat writers. "Hey coach, do you want to come on our podcast? We do them six times a day seven days a week for some unknown reason. Please wear cargo shorts."
Johnson's just getting started of course. He needs to assemble a coaching staff. Even if the Lions block him from bringing guys from their staff, he has connections all over the league. Contrast that to Nagy, who was prohibited by Andy Reid from bringing anyone from the Chiefs. He was lucky that Vic Fangio agreed to stick around for that first year as defensive coordinator or the Bears' entire staff would have been made up of Nagy's former Arena League teammates.
"Wait, where's the big net?"
After Johnson was done, both George and Kevin did their hallway interviews.
Kevin insisted that despite interviewing 17 other (not an exaggeration) candidates that Johnson was their top candidate from day one. Given how quickly they moved to get him once he was available, it's hard to doubt that.
As for George, he was again looking for Hub, and this time taking shots at NFL announcers.
It's easy to chalk this up to fans being excited about something new, but you can't ignore the fact that the Bears hired a guy that everybody else wanted. And his first impression was just that, impressive.
And you can say that anybody can win the press conference. But we're Bears fans. We've seen how hard that can be for the guys they typically hire for this job.