‘Holy cow, how far can we push this thing?’ — Bears’ three-game win streak has the team dreaming big in first season under Ben Johnson
The Chicago Bears are finding ways to win games under the team’s new head coach.
Times are changing in Chicago when it comes to how people are starting to talk about the Bears and it’s no secret first-year head coach Ben Johnson is the main reason behind it.
Once the laughing stock of the league that couldn’t string together wins, the Bears have now won three consecutive games following an 0-2 start to the regular season. But, how the Bears are winning matters even more and it should start putting the rest of the league on notice.
Bears ability to win close games is developing a new-found belief in the building
“We still haven’t played the best football that we’re capable of playing yet,” Johnson said to reporters on Tuesday. “That’s what’s encouraging to me as a coach is when it’s ugly, we’re still finding a way to win and we’re developing that belief.”
Such was the case in the last two games for Chicago. In Week 4 against the Las Vegas Raiders, quarterback Caleb Williams led the offense down to take the lead late in the fourth quarter despite a frustrating game for the unit and then the special teams came through with a blocked field goal to win. In Week 6, the Bears caught a break when the Commanders botched a handoff exchange, giving the ball back to Chicago to eventually set up a game-winning field goal.
A common theme in both those games, besides the final outcome, the Bears struggled. It wasn’t pretty. It was some sloppy football filled with a lot of various mental mistakes. But the Bears still found a way to win and those kind of wins are shaping a new-found mindset in the building once the team starts cleaning up those lingering mistakes.
“Holy cow, how far can we push this thing?” Johnson added. “Let’s see how good we can really get this season. There’s a long way we still can go. And I think they feel that.”
There’s still a lot of football to be played and a schedule that only gets harder as the season progresses. Yet, the Bears are above .500 for the first time all season and sitting in a position to keep this season in contention for postseason action, which wasn’t always the underlining goal for 2025.
Everyone wants to make the playoffs. Heck, the goal of all 32 teams is to win the Super Bowl at the end of the year. But, organizations also understand the reality of situations and the process it takes to get there. In the first season under Ben Johnson, the ultimate goal was to turn around the culture in the building and establish a winning mindset. Not many expected that to be accomplished so soon.
Now that the culture and winning-mentality are being cultivated, the Bears are starting to set their eyes to bigger things in 2025 while staying where their feet are at the same time.
“The hard work. The effort. Everything that pays off. We love it,” Williams explained. “At the end of the day, we’re all itching for wins.”
While it’s not exactly common, we’ve seen this happen before with a first-year head coach. If the belief in the players is created early and the players are playing for each other, incredible things can happen. It’s exciting to see the ship start to turn in Chicago and we’ll see how far it goes in 2025.
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