Johnson updates latest with Bears

Ariana Pensy · Correspondent · 2 hours ago

CHICAGO - On the opening drive of each of Chicago’s games so far this season, the offense has been on point and been able to get in the end zone.

After that, things have been a bit different. The offense has slowed down, and the Bears just have not been able to play complementary football.

“We got to play complementary football at the end of the day too,” head coach Ben Johnson said. “If one unit isn’t playing as well as we’d like, we need both offense and special teams to come through and balance us on out and we just, we simply did not stop the bleeding in really any phase and play complementary football.”

Chicago’s defense was expected to be one of the more physical and dominant defenses in the league, led by edge rusher Montez Sweat. Through the first two weeks, that has not materialized. Sweat had one quarterback hit against the Lions in the Bears’ 52-21 loss on Sunday, but no sacks. In fact, the entire defense did not record a sack the entire game, except for one sack that was negated by a penalty.

While Johnson said Sweat is bringing effort, the Bears also need Sweat to capitalize on opportunities when he is one-on-one.

“He’s brought substantial effort. He’s trying to do it the way that we’re coaching it. I think the one thing, the one area that he’s hearing from our coaches right now is when he does get these one-on-one opportunities, whether it’s with tackles or the tight ends that we’d like to see him capitalize on those just a little bit more. It’s few and far between that they’re singling him up, but we would like to see him get to the quarterback,” Johnson said. “I thought he did have a nice move there on the sack and was able to finish at the quarterback. That was good to see, but unfortunately it did get negated there by the penalty. So, he’s doing some really good things for us, even if it’s not showing up on the stat sheet quite yet in terms of getting close to the quarterback in the passing game and he is doing a nice job in the run game as well.”

The numbers do not look great through the first two games for quarterback Caleb Williams. Right now, he has 417 total passing yards and three passing touchdowns, all to wide receiver Rome Odunze. He has already been sacked six times and threw his first interception of the season against Detroit.

Despite how the numbers look, Johnson has seen improvement from Williams from the season opener against Minnesota to the Detroit game.

“I did see significant growth. It’s not perfect yet. There’s still a number of plays where our eyes aren’t quite in the right position or we’re holding onto the ball just a tick longer than what we’re coaching,” Johnson said. “But, I did see tremendous growth in terms of going through the progression. There were a few times there where we had to get to number three or number four in the read and he was trusting his feet and his footwork and was able to get there. So, I did think he got better from week one to week two. I’m encouraged by what I saw and I’m hopeful that we’ll continue to see another leap here this week.”

When a team drafts a wide receiver early in the second round, there is an expectation that the receiver is going to get a lot of starting time. Chicago drafted receiver Luther Burden III in the second round of the 2025 NFL Draft, but he has only been on the field for 22 percent of the offensive snaps in the first two games.

There may be some people who want to see Burden III on the field more, but Johnson seems to imply Burden III has not earned it yet.

“I think Luther’s slowly gaining the trust as we go here. We’re trying to get him more packages as we’re going. The way that we’ve talked about (it) as a coaching staff going into this week is we’re going to have a lot more competition. I’ve alluded to it before. What these guys look like when the ball’s not in their hands, that’s a big deal for us and so, there were some plays there yesterday that we weren’t quite as pleased with what that looked like on tape and so, we’re going to find out this week at practice who wants to practice hard and who wants to be a little bit more involved with the game plan here going into Sunday.”