During the quarterback meeting the night before the Chicago Bears hosted the Philadelphia Eagles on Sept. 29, backup quarterback Case Keenum pressed coach Ben Johnson over a play he said he wasn’t sure would work. Keenum, a 38-year-old journeyman starting for the injured Caleb Williams, said Johnson assured him the call would be a good one and that he deployed it at the right time.
With a fresh set of downs at Philadelphia’s 41-yard line and 5:55 left in the third quarter, the Bears saw a different look after the snap and Johnson’s design produced an immediate result. The play allowed the primary receiver to change in seconds based on the coverage; when Kalif Raymond broke from the slot he became the primary and Keenum found him wide open for a 41-yard touchdown. The score helped power Chicago to a 27-7 rout.
Players credit those real-time adjustments as a hallmark of Johnson’s work. “He’ll design it based off the voids. Because he’s not putting that conceptualized box that everybody pulls from on film, he starts creating his own play within the defensive scheme that you’re about to go against,” Raymond said, adding that the approach forces defenses to adjust during the game.
Johnson’s approach has helped make the Bears one of the NFL’s most explosive units through a 5-2 start, according to the team record cited. The coach has built a reputation around the league for unorthodox designs, trick plays and options that aim to involve every offensive player. “When he installs a play, like, every play is going to work, every play is going to be an explosive,” Williams said, adding that that confidence across coaches and players “goes a long way throughout the building.”
Johnson’s expertise traces to his youth in Asheville, North Carolina, where he began designing plays as a preteen. Gail Johnson, a teacher and mother of three, discovered scraps of paper filled with tiny scribbles in her sons’ bedroom that included letters such as “E, T,” rows of circles with numbers, and labels like “QB” marked “1.”
