The pieces have been assembled, such as they are.
Bears GM Ryan Poles and coach Ben Johnson worked together to bring them all to the Bears. Now the question is whether Johnson can actually coach this group to an improved record and even, gasp, the playoffs.
The buzz has been how this team acquired so much talent over the last two years that it's only going to take decent coaching to get them headed where they haven't been since 2020, or maybe even 2018 if you consider they actually finished the 2020 playoffs with a losing 8-9 record.
No one wants a team stuck in the 8-9, 9-8 range. They want what Johnson did with Detroit.
It's very possible Johnson could deliver this and here are how the boxes check off in a comparison between what the former Lions offensive coordinator inherited in 2022 with Detroit and the talent the Bears now possess..
Johnson took a Lions offense from 25th in scoring and 22nd in yardage to fifth in scoring and fourth in yardage during his first season. He did it with a receiver corps of Amon-Ra St. Brown, Kalif Raymond, DJ Chark, Josh Reynolds, Tom Kennedy, Quintez Cephus, Maurice Alexander, and tight ends T.J. Hockenson, Brock Wright, James Mitchell and Shane Zylstra.
Sure, they had Brown in his second year, but Raymond is a receiver who had been around since 2016 and never had more than 47 catches until 2021 and has never had more than the 48 he made in 2022. He's better known as a return man. Chark had one good year in Jacksonville and from 2021 on hasn't had more than 35 receptions anywhere. Reynolds has been around since 2017 and never had more than 40 receptions since leaving the Rams in 2021. Cephus never made more than 20 catches in a year, Kennedy never more than eight and Alexander is on the Bears now and has one career catch. Detroit did have injured Jameson Williams that year. He made one catch.
As for the tight ends, they were so impressed with Hockenson that they traded him after seven games and went with Wright, who has never had more than the 18 catches he had that season.
Now Johnson will have DJ Moore, first-round pick Rome Odunze and second-rounder Luther Burden III, a player who many put in the middle of the first round before he inexplicably fell. They have Zaccheaus, whose career receiving stats have been better than Raymond's. They also have Devin Duvernay, whose stats are far better as a receiver than Cephus, Kennedy and Alexander. They have the player they thought was the best tight end in the draft, Colston Loveland, and Cole Kmet, who has had 70 catches in a season, owns19 career touchdowns and led all of the NFL's tight ends in catch percentage last year (85.5%).
This isn't even a close comparison despite St. Brown on one side of the ledger.
It would be easy to build a case for Johnson having better backs in Detroit but he didn't have David Montgomery that year. He had Jamaal Williams, who has never averaged more than 4.3 yards per carry, averages 3.9 for his career, and had more touchdown runs in that year (17) than in the remaining seven years of his career put together (15). All of that shows Johnson's scheme opened it up so even Williams could gain yards. And the Bears currently have the other Lions ground threat, D'Andre Swift, who never gained more than 617 yards until he left Detroit.
Even without drafting a back this year the Bears don't look any worse than that Lions running back room, and no one can be sure what Kyle Monangai or Ian Wheeler really are.
After Johnson stole away David Montgomery and drafted Jahmyr Gibbs, it was a totally different situation in 2023, but in 2022 it was not much different than what the Bears currently have.
The Lions offensive line is often cited as the great difference in their team from the rest of the NFC North, and it truly has been effective, even dominant.
But when 2022 started, the line wasn't a lock to be dominant. One member of the Bears offensive line is one of Detroit's linemen that season, Jonah Jackson. Detroit wound up playing Evan Brown as the right guard starter because of injury. Brown is a journeyman who has been with six teams in a career that started in 2019. He's also a center more than a guard.
They had Frank Ragnow and Penei Sewell as perennial Pro Bowl players, but Sewell hadn't been this in his rookie of 2021 because they had to play him at left tackle part of the time. So to a large extent, he was unproven going into Johnson's first full season as offensive coordinator. Taylor Decker was the left tackle and a Pro Bowl player, but not until the 2024 season. In 2022 he was coming off playing half the schedule due to injury and prior to that had good Pro Football Focus blocking grades, but not elite.
It's easy to see potential for a very effective Bears line this year, considering the changes made. They have a left guard who has been All-Pro more times than any of Detroit's linemen have been All-Pro, and Darnell Wright is viewed by PFF as a rising talent.
Of course they're not going to be what Detroit's line is now, but seeing them at the level Detroit was going into 2022 isn't a stretch.
This is the huge tipping point in Johnson's favor. Dennis Allen's defense gives Johnson the time and ability to get his offense going.
The Bears had a good defense last year that eventually got pulled under by the weight of their own offense drowning every week in a sea of mistakes. They needed improvements and made some.
They were fifth in the league on pass defense before the Hail Mary pass occurred. Injuries and the inept offense destroyed what they built on that side of the ball, Andrew Billings' and Jaquan Brisker's absences being too tough to overcome. The one big weakness that defense had was line depth and they've fortified it with Grady Jarrett and Dayo Odeyingbo.
Detroit, meanwhile, had the worst defense in the NFL in 2022. Johnson was still able to do enough with the offense to allow them to finish 9-8.
The Bears are so far ahead of where the Lions were on defense going into 2022 that a comparison can't even be made.
There are three things the Bears can't account for and one is their division. Just getting one win in the NFC North now is a major accomplishment and it wasn't this way back in 2022. The talent in the division is obviously way better, top to bottom but there is no way to gauge this.
The second is Johnson himself. Is he better as a head coach now than he was looking after only the offense in Detroit? There is no way to know this because he hasn't been a head coach.
Of course Johnson isn't going to let the clock run out in the closing seconds of games with a timeout in his pocket. You would expect he'll have enough sense to not give up 13 yards to let a team set up a far better chance at completing a game-winning Hail Mary pass, and would call timeout to get his own defense set up before the play. In other words, you should not see the same insanity at games' ends that made the Bears laughingstocks during the Matt Eberflus era.
Until you actually see this stability, though, there will be uncertainty.
The final difference can't be anticipated as better or even projected as close to even.
It is, of course, Caleb Williams and Jared Goff.
Johnson's 2022 offense in Detroit had a two-time Pro Bowl quarterback in Goff, and he went for the third of his four Pro Bowls to date in that season. He had quarterbacked a team to the Super Bowl. He had a career passer rating of 91.5 and completion percentage of 64.1% Most importantly, he had 69 career starts.
Williams is still a canvas to be painted on. In fact, it's a canvas with smudges on it left there by Shane Waldron's bumbling and Thomas Brown's attempt to repair Waldron's damage last year.
This one great uncertainty alone makes the 2024 Bears season a colossal question mark.
None of the other potential question marks or perceived areas of superiority or weakness compared to the 2022 Lions team comes close to being the determining factor that this one does.
The moves have been made. Johnson has a plan. Executing it with a second-year quarterback is nothing like doing it with a six-year veteran like Goff was at that point.
Everything rides now on Williams and his need to advance. This Bears passing staff lacks experience bringing along young passers, too.
The Bears have the potential to be far better than the Lions in Johnson's first year simply because of their defense and the offensive personnel improvements made.
None of this happens if Williams runs around trying to hold the ball too long to make plays himself rather than quickly getting the ball in the hands of his playmakers.
All the brilliant scheming in the world is only as good as the guy making the play, and a quarterback is your main playmaker.
