Chicago Bears 🐻⬇️

How Ben Johnson used a calculated, deliberate approach to prepare the 2025 Bears | by Gabby Hajduk

Mad scientist.

Tenacious.

Laser-focused.

Competitor.

It isn't easy to summarize Ben Johnson in one word or phrase. Use something too simple, it won't properly encapsulate his depth. Use something too strong, it may sound overdramatic.

But to Bears players, no word is too dramatic in explaining the rigor that Johnson coached the team with throughout training camp, his first at the helm of an NFL franchise, in preparation for the 2025 season.

For veteran safety Kevin Byard III, this camp was undoubtedly one of the most difficult he's endured over the course of his 10-year career.

"If I put together all of my other nine training camps, we probably still did more tackling in this training camp alone. Easily," Byard told ChicagoBears.com.

Eighth-year linebacker Tremaine Edmunds described it as "full-out, tackle-to-the-ground football."

Receiver Rome Odunze believes Johnson looked at each practice as mini games, where each drill and rep are deliberate decisions made by the coach to prepare his team.

"He wants a specific result out of each drill," Odunze told ChicagoBears.com. "An example, we do a screens period where it has to be full speed, so we had a couple practices at the beginning of training camp where we were feeling it out just to see what full speed actually meant. He was getting after us a little bit because when he says that, he means full speed.

"He means what he says, and I think he has a purpose behind all his things."

It's cliché, but Johnson does have a method to his madness.

He isn't leading two-hour padded practices with live tackling for his own amusement. He isn't blowing the whistle on the offense before they even get the snap off just to mess with them. He isn't creating new rules or establishing new daily cadences just because he can as the head coach.

Every action since Johnson first stepped foot in Halas Hall Jan. 21 is a result of calculated reasoning. Throughout the past six weeks, the majority of his decisions were made to fulfill two priorities he set out to accomplish during training camp and set the Bears up to take on the upcoming season: build mental toughness as a unit and build team chemistry.

"I feel like we've accomplished both of those things over the course of camp and still, it'll be an ongoing process as we go into the season as well," Johnson told ChicagoBears.com. "In terms of team chemistry, it's really that trust we have, not just amongst the players and their teammates, but also within the coaching staff as well. We have a lot of new faces, a lot of new people in the building and yet, we still need to come together so we can function at a high level on Sundays, so that was really priority number one.

"And two, with the mental toughness, something we've been preaching to our guys about is 'How do we respond to adversity? How do we manage our emotions, maintain our focus and bounce back from setbacks?' which is really the story of any season in the NFL."

Byard still remembers how Johnson began the first team meeting he held in the spring.

"He basically said, 'you know what's better than scoring 30 points? Scoring 40,'" Byard recalled.

"And that just popped it off."

Odunze remembers another message from Johnson that set the tone.

"I remember him saying it's not how you win, it's how much you win by," Odunze said. "It's just his sort of aggressive nature in the aspect of wanting to dominate opponents. That entails all the things he embodies, whether it's his focus or his precision, his mindset.

"It all goes towards that and dominating opponents, of course offensively, but he wants the defense to go out there and give them a goose egg as well."

Those insights into Johnson's mindset told the players all they needed to know about their preparation going forward heading into the offseason program and training camp. Johnson isn't just focused on winning or scoring or succeeding. He wants to do so in commanding fashion.

In order to achieve that standard during the season, a high level of intensity, physicality and perseverance would be required during training camp.

Defensively, that standard was conveyed both via Johnson and defensive coordinator Dennis Allen. One of the first public examples came in the form of 40 up-downs that Allen instructed each member of the defense to complete at the beginning of camp. It was an initiation into Allen's defense, which he called "a privilege to be on."

While Johnson has entrusted Allen to lead the defense, the unit is an extension of Johnson's vision for the culture he has aimed to create, which the Bears displayed in full Tuesday, Aug. 5 — a practice that garnered national attention for its unrivaled physicality.

From Byard's perspective, those types of days over the summer encapsulated Johnson's daily message to his team: "don't apologize for competing."

"Sometimes you have these handshake agreements that it's like, 'hey, we're not gonna go too hard on this play or kind of protect this guy,'" Byard explained. "But to Ben, it's like, 'no, don't apologize for competing.' Just tell the other person, player, if it's a joint practice, 'no, just up your level or standard of playing or how you're competing.'

"So I'm not going to apologize — I'm going to go make the play. I'm going to compete to the highest level. So that's just how the mentality of our team is always going to be, because you have to practice that for it to translate into the game."

The veteran safety believes that simple message set the tone in a way he hadn't experienced before in his career. The line between what was considered tackle periods and "thud" periods became blurred. Byard saw a switch flip on the defense where "nobody wanted to be the guy that's not playing with the right intensity."

"It's almost like if you're going to take it all the way to the edge, you would rather be on the side of it being too aggressive than not aggressive enough," Byard added.

That blurred line pushed the offense in ways they would typically only experience during games.

"It's kind of hardened us and built that callus to understand when it comes to a game, it's gonna be war out there and things are gonna be intense and all those different emotions that go with it," Odunze said.

Johnson also found new ways to challenge the offense that didn't rely on the defense's intensity.

Odunze recalled the grueling "long drive drill," which he believes All-Pro guard Joe Thuney introduced to Johnson. The offense would run play after play after play without substitutions or stoppages. It was a drill the unit performed a few times throughout camp, and one Odunze described as "no joke."

"It's about letting that fatigue set in," Odunze said. "That definitely builds your mental toughness, because you're going out there and having to perform when you're dead tired.

"You're in it for the long run, but it's a challenge, and that's what we need."

Johnson's ability to repeatedly challenge the entire team, while keeping each player locked in day after day for six weeks, speaks to the level of respect he's garnered throughout the locker room.

Some of that respect stems from Johnson knowing when extra motivation is needed.

Johnson often starts meetings with a quote or a soundbite or podcast clip that had stuck out to him in order to hammer home his messaging for the day. Byard recalled a particularly captivating moment from a team meeting last week, where Johnson read an excerpt from the book, "Objective Secure," written by U.S. Army Special Forces Warrant Officer Nick Lavery, who suffered a severe injury in battle but returned to combat duty after being treated.

"He literally ended the meeting there," Byard said. "Normally, he'll say whatever he's gonna say, and then he'll talk about the schedule. He walked up, read this part from the book, and said, 'all right, break up.'

"It was one of those ones. It's like, that was a crazy story, but everybody felt the message in what he was saying about the body is tired, different things are going on, everybody has their own stuff they're dealing with, but let's stay focused on the mission at hand, which is today and the practice and the process."

With each "mission" the Bears navigated this summer, the team's mental toughness grew, both individually and collectively.

Obviously, enduring 10-plus-hour days of working toward Johnson's standard is nothing short of physical and mentally fatiguing. But, when trying to establish a new identity and ignite a locker room, that level of exhaustion is a somewhat necessary result.

"At the end of the day, we're all going through the same things," Edmunds told ChicagoBears.com. "My body hurts, his body hurts, and we all know that we all feel a certain way. We all know the feeling of each person, because, they are tough practices. But you know the guys that want that, the guys that rise to the top off those moments, that strive to be in those moments. They want to be stressed and want to be uncomfortable.

"As competitors, we've got to push ourselves to that to reach the next level. And in getting better myself, I'm making guys around me better."

In the middle of training camp, Johnson took his foot off the gas for one afternoon.

The Bears filed into the auditorium for their 5-minute team meeting. Instead of laying out the schedule or intention for the day ahead, Johnson informed the group they would be leaving Halas Hall for the day and heading to the beach.

Commotion ensued inside the facility as players quickly made their way back to the locker room to grab beach necessities like bucket hats and sunglasses before hopping on a fleet of buses that awaited in the parking lot.

"Something as simple as a beach day — and not even simple, because a lot of teams don't do that, especially not in training camp — to bring guys together," Edmunds said. "We had an intense practice the day before, another intense practice the day after, but we were able to separate it for a while.

"It was just us building a team together, having everybody around each other and everybody just stepping away, and that was staff included. I think that was good for us."

Odunze remembers playing Spikeball with some teammates while others played classic games like "don't let the ball touch the water," beach volleyball or basketball pong. Others just hung out in the lake and threw the football around.

Johnson's message, once again, was crystal clear. The beach day, of course, brought upon team bonding, but it also felt rooted in trust.

"He is very diligent, very calculated with everything that he does," Odunze said, "so he understands, whether it was that point in camp where everyone was starting to hit that wall a little bit in the dog days of it, to give us that day.

"It definitely rejuvenated us a good bit. And it gives us the opportunity to put that trust in him, to know that when we work, we work and when it's time to take off the gas a little bit, he'll let us know."

The intent of that beach day was also an extension of how the Bears spent the first two weeks of training camp.

Not only did Bears players see each other plenty around Halas Hall, Johnson also wanted to ensure they could connect after a long day's work.

"We stayed in the hotel together as a team," Edmunds said. "I know that may go over a lot of people's head, but just having everybody under one roof, like they had a player's lounge there, so if we all wanted to get together and chill, eat together and do different things, we were all there. Having everybody together after these long days, being able to go back and just reflect how the day went was important."

Combine the grind of camp alongside teammates with memorable moments to bond over, and you have a locker room that will head into the 2025 season with the necessary trust required to handle both success and adversity.

While relationships between teammates are a critical factor in how plays are executed or high-pressure situations are handled, the bond between a head coach and his players lays the groundwork for those in-game moments each week.

Johnson built that trust with decisions like the beach day or live tackling in practice, but he's also taken small moments to really connect with each player in a way that suits them as individuals.

For Edmunds, that comes in the form of some lighthearted trash talk.

"It's fun out there just talking a little bit of trash to him because he's very competitive, and you can just feel it in the way that he communicates to you," Edmunds added. "It doesn't matter if it's practice, if it's a walk-through, whatever it is, he has that energy and that charm about himself. That's who he is. That's his personality.

"And I love to compete, so being able to voice that out loud is fun. It may be a real quick moment, but he's competitive and you want that from the person that's leading."

Johnson has developed a different type of connection with Byard, who more recently bonded with his coach through family – both men have three young children. During stretching lines at one training camp practice, Johnson told Byard that their wives and kids met at the same gym days prior.

Days after that interaction, the Bears held a family barbecue, where players and staff got together and had lunch with their families at Halas Hall after practice. Byard's three kids were running around the field when Johnson walked over and introduced himself to Byard's family.

What began as a small interaction turned into an unexpected yet heartwarming moment between Johnson and Byard that provided the veteran captain with an altered perspective of his coach: one that instilled a more personal level of trust and forced the safety to pause and capture a photo.

"My son, my one-year-old ran up to Ben —and he doesn't do this at all, which is very weird, it almost was like, 'woah what you doing?' — but he ran up on him and did one of these," Byard said as he motioned his arms upward. "And Ben picked him up and Amari literally put his head on his shoulder. He stayed there too. It wasn't like a quick thing.

"I'm like, 'hold on, what's going on? Like, your pop's right here, bro.' It was random. He jumped up and just laid on his shoulder and he laid there for a good minute."

The next 18 weeks will be the true test for the 2025 Bears.

With more than 20 training camp practices and three preseason games now behind them, a new mission begins as the 17-game NFL regular season kicks off this week.

The work each team logged over the past six weeks will be presented on a national stage, and in the Bears' case, in prime time on Monday night against the Vikings. The Ben Johnson-Bears offense will debut in full for the first time.

Players like Odunze understand that there will be bumps along the way as the unit settles in and adapts to the weekly grind of the season. However, it's the confidence in which Johnson has installed the offense that provides the players with the proper foundation to flourish.

"I don't think he's ever wavered from his initial beliefs, initial installation of the offense," Odunze said, "which I think is something that's a credit to him and his pedigree, just being able to stay consistent with all those things.

"When you have that standard, and when you have that consistency as a head coach and an offensive mind, I feel like it allows everybody to understand where they're at and where they need to improve."

Perfection is unrealistic in the NFL. Still, that's what Johnson expects. He strives for perfection — whether it's how he coaches or calls a game, how the offense executes a formation or how dominant his team is.

But in reality, the Bears are focused on being fundamentally-sound, consistent, aggressive and competitive. They want to win and they trust their tenacious, laser-focused, mad scientist-like competitive coach to help lead them.

"It's going to be an ongoing process," Byard said. "Obviously, this being the first year of him here, first year under this culture, there's always going to be lessons to be learned throughout the year. But I think the tone in terms of how we need to play or how we need to operate in the building, that's been set. The foundation has been set. Now we just build on top of that."