Ben Johnson looks ahead to Week 2 matchup vs. Lions | Chicago Bears

Ben Johnson looks ahead to Week 2 matchup vs. Lions | Chicago Bears

All right, I said my piece yesterday, so I’ll go ahead and open it up. And you were such a big part of the Lions turnaround there. Um, because of that, I think a lot of the fans were upset that you decided to join a division rival. Brett Holmes said he was surprised a little bit by your decision. Did you take any of that into account as far as, you know, what it would mean to the Lions and their fans, how upset they were when you factored in your decision to to come here? Um, well, I would say this, Carlos, good to see you. Um, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I Everything everything last year um ran through my head and uh that was one of the unfortunate parts of of uh making that decision was you you were say saying goodbye to a lot of friends um in a great place. And so, um, my family, myself, we have a lot of strong relationships there in that community. Um, hopefully that continues to stay that way as well. But, uh, you know, we felt like this was the best opportunity for myself and and my family and and we were really excited about coming to Chicago. And so, um, you know, at times you you have to make tough decisions and and that’s really how that one went down. Yeah. Stand on Monday. um how he considers, you know, your relationship. You said you’ll always be a friend. Um you said you hadn’t heard from him since August, I guess. Um have you heard from Dan and are you did anybody reach out and wish you good luck before Monday night’s game from that organization? Yeah, we uh we texted back and forth a few weeks ago and so uh we have been in touch, but um you know that friendship’s always going to be there. I I view him like family and and I think he would tell you the same thing. So that that’ll never change. Um, we have fond memories of back when I was just a young snot-nosed computer punk, as he likes to call it, in in Miami. And uh, you know, I I feel like we both grown up in this profession of of coaching. You know, he had been in it for a long time as a player. And, uh, you know, we both come a long way. So, you look back at that Miami staff back in 2012 and 2013 and and there were a lot of really good coaches on that staff and um you know that’s that’s part of the journey is seeing where everyone goes. Understanding how much focus is on the football side this week. What’s it going to be like for you Sunday when you walk on the sidelines on the other side of Ford Field and reflect if at all on on this journey? Yeah. Yeah. I think my mind is going to be about just winning the football game. And that’s really what it’s going to come down to is uh us going out there and looking to to find our first victory of the season. And so um it’ll be a tough environment. You know, that that place has really turned into one of the strongest home field advantage places uh I think in the National Football League. And so uh we’ll have our work cut out for us. We’ll have to be able to communicate within that that hostile environment. And uh you know, I think we’ll find out a lot about ourselves. When you have a talked uh over the last few months about Caleb and his throwing accuracy. You keep going back to his footwork, the feet uh being the starting point for all that. What did you see as far as his feet being aligned and his mechanics Monday? There there was a lot of good that came out of it when he was doing it properly. It ball came out on time and uh you know, I thought he was delivering accurate footballs, but it’s it’s still not 100% all the time. Um and that’s something that we’re working through. Ben, were you happy with the time that you were, I guess, still had left on the clock when you were breaking the huddle? In other words, did you feel like you were breaking the huddle quick enough to do everything you want to be doing pre- snap? Uh, I don’t think we ran into any delay of games. We did have to burn through two timeouts because, uh, one was that fourth down. I was a little late getting that call in. And another one, we we uh, we were going to probably have a delay had Caleb not called the timeout. And so, um, other than that though, I thought the calls were getting in on in decent and orderly fashion and, uh, you know, we we’ll continue to speed up that process in terms of breaking the huddle from there on out. Can you elaborate on what what some of the such good knowledge of the other roster that you’re facing this week? How do you communicate that to your coaching staff? Yeah, I think I think they know they watch the tape. They’re really good coaches and so they they know who their uh, playmakers are and and maybe some perceived weaknesses on their roster. Every team has strengths and weaknesses and so um I let them do their due diligence and and it’s always good to have different eyes on it and uh you know we talked last night about their roster a little bit and we’ll continue to do that over the course of the week here because you know stuff that’s not on tape though. Sure. Is that and that was last night that conversation just Yeah. a couple things might have might have popped up but once again we got we got some really good smart coaches and they they know what the tape says. And TJ and Jaylen went through pretty extensive workouts before the game Monday. looked like they were moving around. Well, will they be you expecting them to play this weekend? Hopeful. Hopeful. Yeah, we we’ll see how that goes. We’re uh you know, we’re working through treatments right now. We’ll have a walk through here tonight and then we’ll release our our preliminary uh report here this afternoon. So, elaborate on what some of the the responsibility that Caleb might have in terms of the false starts that were out there relative to Cadence if if that is part of it. Yeah, it’s it’s all of us, but I think whenever you’re the quarterback and certainly as as the play caller myself, you know, you take a lot of responsibility for that. And so if we’re not all getting off at the same time or if uh we’re having procedure issues, then um yeah, you look at the play caller and the quarterback first and foremost, and it it’s really the responsibility of everybody else from there to to make sure we’re getting it right. So, um once again, that’s a huge point of emphasis here this week. Did it surprise you at all that Well, I mean, it’s week one in the in the NFL and so, um, there’s really a lot of unknown that pops up and and I thought, uh, Green Bay came out flying around. I thought that’s what showed up on their tape was that defense was all over the field. They were relentless. Um, and so I I mean they have some young players up front and so I I anticipate them to be much improved this week. And on on your first play of the final drive, you guys came out of the the change of possession break and then it was a little bit slow getting and snap ends up hitting DJ while he’s in motion. What all happened in that sequence? What Yeah, those were some of our our last plays of the game and uh we weren’t fully on the same page on that. What was the uh response you got from Caleb as you went through some of the problems of that game Monday? Very positive. You know, like he’s been the same. He’s been consistent really from the springtime to the training camp till now. And it’s it’s been uh looking in the mirror, what can I do better? He’s very coachable. Um I think it’s been it’s been great. It’s been a really good process. And uh I can’t stress enough how how good the support system is around them between uh the coaches in that room with JT Barrett and and Declan and Press and and then along with Case Keenum, someone else that uh you know has has a lot of experience in this league playing playing this game. So um I think we’re really good in terms of cleaning up the mistakes and moving forward. You said yesterday that you thought BJ was okay. Was that the case? That’s the hope. That’s the hope. Yeah. We’ll see the report later. like what would you like from No, he I thought all those receivers and uh I’ll talk about Rome in just a second, but they they all had to get their hands dirty in the run game and so they were very willing to do that last week. Um obviously the running game didn’t take off to the effect that we wanted to, but he had a number of of jobs there where uh you know from blocking DBs to linebackers to cutting off defensive ends in the running game. So that was the the first thing that popped off the tape and then uh he was very detailed in his route running as well. He created some separation when it was close and and uh so I think there’s a lot of things to build on. And what what do you want to see from Kyle to find a way to use him in the running games? Many. Yeah, I I need to call more runs. You know, we probably were at what under 20 for called runs for the game. Um and so I need to I need to call more so that we get him in the game a little bit more. But he uh that’s something that EB and I have talked about just making sure he has more carries going forward. Just curious um you said Dan can’t call you. What did you call him? Oh shoot. I don’t even remember. That was a long time ago. Appreciate you guys.

Head coach Ben Johnson addresses the media on Wednesday at Halas Hall.

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