Clinching a playoff spot as the Bears did over the weekend is an impressive accomplishment, but coach Ben Johnson knows that there's more to achieve.
The Bears (11-4) will win the NFC North with one victory in their final two games or one loss by Green Bay (9-5-1) in its last two contests. It's also possible for the Bears to earn the No. 1 seed and a first-round bye in the playoffs. They are currently the No. 2 seed behind the Seahawks (12-3).
"Our step No. 1 was to get to 11 [wins]," Johnson said. "There's never been an 11-win team to not make it, and so we felt pretty good about that being the number going into the season. That was step one. Step two is we want to win this division. We want to have at least one home playoff game. And then step three would be clinch a No. 1 seed. So there are a lot of things still out there to play for. Our guys know that."
The Bears put themselves in position to secure a playoff spot Saturday night when they rallied from a late 16-6 deficit to stun Green Bay 22-16 in overtime at Soldier Field. After Cairo Santos' 43-yard field goal closed the gap to 16-9 with 1:59 remaining, Caleb Williams' 6-yard TD pass to Jahdae Walker on fourth-and-4 knotted the score 16-16 with :24 to play. The Bears then won in overtime on Williams' 46-yard TD pass to DJ Moore.
On the tying TD, Williams beat a Green Bay blitz and hit a wide open Walker in the right corner of the end zone.
"Third down [Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley] gave us cover-zero and I wasn't sure if he was going to do it again or not," Johnson said. "He did it again on fourth down and Caleb was ready for it. He drifted away from the unblocked player. When teams go cover-zero, that means they're going to bring one more than you have in pass pro. There's going to be a free runner and Caleb recognized that, drifted away from it and went to our cover-zero answer on that play."
Walker's TD would not have been possible if Josh Blackwell had not recovered an onside kick following Santos' field goal with 1:56 remaining. It was just the latest impact play that Blackwell has produced on special teams. In Week 4 in Las Vegas, he deflected Daniel Carlson's 54-yard field goal attempt with :33 to play to preserve a 25-24 comeback win over the Raiders.
"We feel like he's one of the best special teams players in the NFL right now," Johnson said. "Whether he gets that recognition or not publicly, I don't know. He's a part of our success as a team, our special teams unit as a whole. He's really found quite a niche there."
The Bears rallied Saturday night after Brandon McManus' 28-yard field goal had extended Green Bay's lead to 16-6 with 5:03 left in the fourth quarter. Taking over at their own 32 needing two scores, they hoped to generate a touchdown to make it a three-point game.
"We understood how quickly we needed to score," Johnson said. "When you're down by 10 like that, the simple thing is, 'Hey, we can get the field goal and then the touchdown.' But in reality, you want to get that touchdown on the first possession as often as you possibly can. When you look at these around the league over the course of 10-plus years, your chances of scoring a touchdown are a lot easier on the first possession than the second possession. So that's the intent."
If they had to settle for a field goal, the Bears—with two timeouts remaining—hoped to kick it before the two-minute warning to preserve one stoppage of the clock. But even though they snapped the ball on third-and-9 with 2:44 left, they were unable to get the kick off until the two-minute warning following Williams' 5-yard completion to Moore over the middle.
"We could've handled that third down into fourth down better as an offense and as a special teams unit, and that's on me," Johnson said. "That's 100% on me. I have to do a better job coaching that with all the players involved, all the coaches involved, and I think we'll be better for that going forward."
Asked what could have been smoother, Johnson said: "I don't want to put our field goal unit in that position to start with, with the clock running like that, so ideally, that third-down throw is either past the sticks or it's clearly going to be out of bounds, to where we're not having a running clock and we're forcing our field goal unit out there. I can do a better job communicating that we need to kick that thing as soon as we possibly can. That being said, they're getting the 'K' ball in there. At one point that thing was fumbling around on the ground, and the umpire stood over the ball for a longer period of time than I had hoped for, and so we weren't able to get the kick off nearly as quickly as I had foreseen in my head. There were a number of things that had happened there."
There also were a number of things that happened Sunday in the waning moments of the Steelers' 29-24 win over the Lions—a result that enabled the Bears to clinch a playoff berth. Detroit had two apparent touchdowns nullified by offensive pass interference penalties in the final :22 of the game.
"It's pretty wild to watch that one unfold," said Johnson, who was hired by the Bears this year after spending the previous six seasons as a Lions assistant coach. "It goes from Pittsburgh missing a field goal to Detroit taking it all the way down there and having a chance. That's the league, right? I mean, that's what makes it so much fun to watch. I know it's a tough way for them to go out at home, and I feel for a number of those guys. I'm still fairly close with a number of them. And yet that's how this game goes sometimes."
The Bears have now won six games this season after trailing in the final 2:00 of regulation, the most in the NFL this year and the most in franchise history. They are 6-1 in games decided by five points or fewer in 2025 after going 1-6 in contests decided by five points or fewer last season.
"We all prefer to have the lead going into the fourth quarter if we had our druthers," Johnson said. "But it's just not the way it's gone for us this year, and yet the guys are still finding a way to come out on top.
"This is an important thing, though. You want to be a clutch team. You want to be able to handle the pressure and rise to the occasion. We've got a team built like that. There's guys on offense, defense and special teams that they rise up and they play their best on the biggest stage and in the biggest moments.
"That's really important. That's a great quality to have as a team and as a locker room and certainly when I came in, it felt like in previous years, having competed against this team. [the Bears] didn't win those types of games. To see that shift in our favor, that's a great thing. And we can still get better to the point where we're not putting ourselves in those situations as much and going to the fourth quarter with a lead and potentially close out games that way."
