Chicago Sports Tonight: Reacting to the Bears' 24-22 win over Green Bay
The Bears got one for the road, and over Green Bay no less. The Chicago Sports Tonight panel of Laurence Holmes, Gabe Ramirez, Lou Canellis and Tina Nguyen react to the Bears' walk-off win.
LAKE FOREST, Ill. - Right now, the betting favorite to be the next head coach of the Chicago Bears is Detroit Lions' offensive coordinator Ben Johnson.
Before Monday, it felt like there was a back-and-forth between Johnson and the Bears' front office through different reports, such as Johnson saying he was looking for alignment between coach and front office and the Bears saying they wanted a "leader of men."
On Monday, however, the two are no longer hypothetically dancing. The Bears have requested an interview with Johnson, according to multiple reports.
After the report came out, Bears' quarterback Caleb Williams conducted a press conference to wrap up his rookie season in the NFL. He was asked about Johnson, and the quarterback gave an honest answer.
"I was fascinated watching," Williams said.
Williams got a sideline view of Johnson's offense for two games this season.
The first was the 23-20 loss on Thanksgiving Day to the Lions at Ford Field. The second was a 34-17 blow-out loss at Solider Field.
Williams talked about watching the final Sunday Night Football game of the regular season, which was a winner-takes-all grudge match between the Lions and Minnesota Vikings. The winner took the NFC North crown.
The Lions won 31-9. It was the 10th game this season where the Lions scored 30 points or more. It was a clinic for how to get playmakers into space, too.
In a high-profile game, Johnson's offense engineered four touchdowns. Running back Jahmyr Gibbs scored all four. It wasn't the first time Williams watched Johnson's offense.
"Even watching last night knowing kind of what they are going to be in certain situations and being able to go out there and execute and engineer," Williams said. "In our game, I'd just kind of sit back and just kind of watch and try to learn something while I watch."
Williams spent the entire year learning. In his rookie season, he took plenty of hits, bumps and bruises while he picked up how to play quarterback at the NFL level. The results showed.
The 22-year-old quarterback had the fifth-best passing season in Bears history in a year when he had two different offensive coordinators and two different head coaches.
There's only one other quarterback in Bears history that's thrown 20 touchdowns and less than 10 interceptions in a single season. That was Rudy Bukich in 1965.
This season, 51.6 percent of Detroit's offensive drives ended in an offensive score. It's such a wild stat, it deserves to be rephrased: more than half the time, Johnson's offenses score points.
That's the kind of offense that made Williams wonder what it would be like working in Johnson's offense.
Can you blame him?
"He had a great look for counters and things like that," Williams said. "I think he's obviously done really well, so I think it would be cool to see what that would be like."
