Bears HC Ben Johnson is already sending a strong message to the entire locker room with early expectations for 2026
The Chicago Bears understand what’s to be expected going forward.
The Chicago Bears had an incredible first season under head coach Ben Johnson and by many accounts overperformed from what was expected out of this team after winning the NFC North and reaching the NFC Divisional Round.
From Johnson’s standpoint, it wasn’t enough. The goal every season is to win the Super Bowl and the Bears fell short of that goal by two games.
And now, the Bears are onto the offseason where the page is turned with a blank chapter to start writing in.
Ben Johnson is setting some strong expectations for 2026
“There is no building off of this,” Johnson stated on Wednesday talking with reporters. “We go back to square one. We are back at the bottom again. That’s really all 32 teams. If you feel otherwise, you’re probably missing the big picture.”
That’s the exact kind of mindset this team needs to have, and something that was missing from this organization after the 2018 season under former head coach Matt Nagy. You don’t build off success in this league, you restart every single season from the ground up.
“We gotta start from scratch,” Johnson added. “We gotta start from the fundamentals. A lot of guys talked about how difficult this training camp was, I didn’t feel like it was anything out of my ordinary. They know what the expectation is. They know what the process is that we believe in as a coaching staff. More than anything else, they’re going to know what they’re getting themselves into. And yet we gotta dig a little bit deeper, we gotta work a little bit harder, and we gotta give a little bit more. if we want to take this thing over the top.”
It’s a similar sentiment shared by veteran tight end Cole Kmet, the team’s longest-tenured offensive player, when he met with reporters in the locker room on Monday. It’s wishful thinking to think the Bears can ride off this success and run it back next season.
That’s not the mentality Johnson is having and sending to this team. You have to work twice as hard to even think about having the similar level of success, or even exceeding it, next season. You get what you earn in this league, there’s no other way around it.
Johnson understands that and the expectations couldn’t be more clear for this entire locker room when they return to the team facilities in a few weeks. At the same time, the Bears did show some positive traits that Johnson believes can be carried over to 2026.
“Our identity that we outlined that we wanted to show on tape, I thought that came through,” Johnson said. “We have it up in the team room, the words on the wall are one thing but bringing it to life is another thing. I thought those guys did that.
“The number one thing was physicality, I thought we were a physical unit on tape… Number two is being sound, playing sound football and being fundamentally sound and being schematically sound. I thought that showed up week in and week out, we still can get better in some areas – we gotta do a better job catching the football next year – and I can tell you right now that will be a point of emphasis for us when they come back in the spring time. The last one was being a poised unit, and this is one I was the most proud about. That ended up being our identity there for most of the season and showed up in the playoffs. We handled pressure better than most.”
It’s a strong foundation to start from going into 2026, but everything else starts from square one.
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