Johnson told reporters that his appreciation for defensive end Montez Sweat “grew even more” while watching tape of him from last year.

In his seventh NFL season, Sweat recorded 10.0 sacks and 53 tackles—the second most of his career in both categories—as well as 13 tackles-for-loss, three forced fumbles, one fumble recovery and five pass breakups.

“I loved him during the season, but when you watch the self-scout after the year, I think this was a guy that played at a very high level,” Johnson said. “I talked to him yesterday about, ‘Hey, I would argue it was the best year of his career.’ Whether that showed up statistically or not, that’s debatable, but his ability to play the run, play the pass, I thought he did a really nice job, and hopefully it’s something we can piggyback on and carry that momentum into this year.”

For the first time in several years, left tackle Braxton Jones is not spending the spring rehabbing an injury he sustained the previous season.

“This was the first one since I think my second or rookie year where [I] truly got that full offseason, not dealing with anything after,” Jones said. “It means everything to me to be able to get the reps during the OTAs, know what we want as a team, from Ben to my [position] coach, knowing what we all want.

“It’s just huge for me. And being able to go out there and just rep it over and over again and have such a great coach like Dan [Roushar] on me about the small details, it’s unbelievable. I’m blessed to be out there and be able to do OTAs.”

Jones is competing to regain the starting left tackle position he held for most of the previous four seasons. Selected by the Bears in the fifth round of the 2022 draft out of Southern Utah, he started all 17 games as a rookie. He remained the No. 1 left tackle, though injuries limited him to 11 contests in 2023 and 12 in 2024.

Despite still rebounding from a broken fibula that ended his 2024 campaign, Jones won a competition last summer with Ozzy Trapilo, Theo Benedet and Kiran Amegadjie for the starting position. Jones opened the first four games before being replaced by Trapilo in the second quarter of a road win over the Raiders. A few weeks after being replaced against the Raiders, Jones sustained a knee injury in practice that sidelined him for the rest of the season.

Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen has challenged the offense in offseason practices by employing a variety of different blitzes and exotic looks.

“It’s great because it’s back and forth,” Johnson said. “There’s been a lot of that here this springtime. He put in some cover zero [Tuesday] too. Some we responded well to, and other times we didn’t. It’s good for the quarterbacks. It’s good for everybody on the offensive line, for sure. Good communication throughout. Maybe we have to make a check to protect ourselves. And then there’s a lot of back and forth schematically when we go up in the bunker upstairs that as coaches we can say ‘hey, if we get this again, what’s a better answer?’ Or ‘do we need to tweak some things?’ So there’s a healthy back and forth going on.”