Ben Johnson has played the long game with key part of Bears offense and it’s now working perfectly going into Week 12
Ben Johnson is starting to get exactly what he wants out of the RB position.
As soon as the Chicago Bears hired head coach Ben Johnson back in January, the team’s new head coach immediately got to work overhauling the offensive personnel, starting with the offensive line prior to the draft and then adding two exciting pieces to the passing game.
What Johnson waited on was adding another back to the offense to complement D’Andre Swift until finally selecting Kyle Monangai in the seventh-round of the 2025 NFL Draft. Even still, fans from the outside wanted to see the Bears add another threat in the run game well into training camp.
Johnson, as stubborn as he is, decided to play the long game with the backs he had in the building and, after a few weeks to get everyone gelled together, it’s working perfectly as Johnson intended.
Ben Johnson is starting to have full trust in D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai
“I think we are very comfortable with both those guys right now,” Johnson told reporters on Monday. “I think both of them have proven that they’re very capable with the ball in their hands, they’re very dependable in pass protection. Both of our backs did a nice job stepping up to the plate and trying to shut that down.
“I got a lot of confidence in those guys. It might be series-by-series, it might be hot-hand, we kinda go based on what we see in practice a lot of the times too. But, I feel really good about both those guys.”
At the start of the season, Swift dominated the touches until Johnson and the coaches finally started developing more trust with Monangai, and the rookie started producing with his opportunities. It set up for the perfect storm in Week 9 when Monangai exploded for 176 yards with Swift sitting out.
With Swift back in the fold the last two weeks and Monangai coming into his own both as a physical runner and as a blocker, the Bears offense has finally started leaning into the two-back approach that Johnson made so lethal during his time with the Detroit Lions and an interesting stat backs that up.
Only two teams entering Week 12 have two backs with 400+ rushing yards this season, the Chicago Bears (Swift with 634 yards and Monangai with 413 yards) and the Detroit Lions (Jahmyr Gibbs with 732 yards and David Montgomery with 493 yards).
When Johnson was the offensive coordinator in Detroit working with Gibbs and Montgomery, he ran a similar series-by-series and hot-hand rotation he’s doing now in Chicago. And while everyone coined the two as “Sonic and Knuckles” both backs could be used interchangeably and had the ability to run any play within the offense, not just coming in for certain situations such as short-yardage.
Johnson is starting to get to that confidence level with Swift and Monangai, which is helping keep the offense fresh and also even more unpredictable to defend because it’s not just Monangai coming in for short-yardage situations.
Over the last two games, Swift has carried the ball 34 times for 170 yards (5.0 yards per attempt) and Monangai has carried the ball 19 times for 51 yards (2.7 yards per attempt) and two touchdowns. Ideally, the Bears would like some more consistency out of Monangai on a per carry basis, but the two are rotating in and out almost flawlessly for the Bears.
The backbone of this scheme is built on having a strong and consistent run game. Having confidence in both backs to step in has done wonders for laying the initial ground work for this unit and it gives Johnson one less thing to worry about on game days. Johnson’s long game paid off after all.
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