Ben Johnson continues to go to bat for the Bears defense despite another rough showing in Week 18
The team’s head coach wasn’t all too worried about the defensive performance on Sunday.
The Chicago Bears expressed plenty of frustrations after the way things went in the team’s Week 18 loss to the Detroit Lions and there’s certainly a lot of blame to go around.
After the game, head coach Ben Johnson was the most livid we’ve seen all season but mainly pointed to the issues on offense being the reason the team lost that game. It seemed Johnson was less concerned about the Swiss cheese defense that allowed 433 yards of offense.
The defensive players in Chicago were certainly frustrated with their performance in that game though, especially coming off an equally frustrating showing in Week 17. But, even after watching the tape, Johnson still went to bat for his defense on Monday morning.
Ben Johnson defends the Bears defense and has a valid reason as to why
“We’ve got a lot of talent on our defensive side,” Johnson said in his interview with Jeff Joniak on ESPN Chicago. “At the end of the day, you look at the performance they had last night and they held a really good offense to 19 points. You can complain about style points all you want, I’m not going to. I thought they held up their end of the bargain.
“I haven’t made it any secret about it that the offense needs to come through and help us win that ball game yesterday. There’s certainly things that our defense can get better at and improve upon, but the name of the game is to limit the opposing team from scoring points.”
Johnson certainly has a valid point there. Sunday’s game wasn’t like Week 2 when the Bears allowed 52 points or like Week 17 when the defense surrendered 42 points. Holding that explosive offense to just 19 points and only one touchdown was impressive in itself.
Now, the defense certainly struggled giving up yards way too easily, a constant issue the team has struggled with all season long. But, it’s clear Johnson doesn’t care about that to an extent. Would he like it to improve, absolutely, but holding that team to 19 points should have been good enough and was a whole lot better than allowing 40+ like they did the week before.
The offense is what dug the Bears into an early hole and then failed to capitalize on a takeaway late in the fourth quarter to potentially win it. And yeah, Johnson regrets punting it back and putting the defense on the field to lose the game, but the offensive issues played way more of a role.
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