Thursday Thoughts on Leadership

January 22, 2026

By Dennis Conner

Leadership is a team effort


The Chicago Bears of 2025 are a very different team from the Bears of the recent past. The team broke the hearts of their loyal fans so often that we began to expect it. It has been 15 years since the Bears won a playoff game. It’s been nearly 20 years since the last NFC Championship and the Super Bowl loss to the Indianapolis Colts. An Illinois native was the President when they won their last Super Bowl Championship in 1985. 

The 2025 Bears transformed that expectation of heartbreak into hope. Half of their wins were come-from-behind victories, including two at the expense of the loathsome Green Bay Packers. There were last-second, improbable passes. They even recovered an onside kick in their second regular-season game against the Packers. It was a rare achievement under the current NFL kickoff rules, with only 8% recovered through the season to that point. The 2025 team inspired their fans to believe victory was not only possible but inevitable. And victory seemed inevitable right up until the moment it wasn’t this past Sunday night. 

As I wrote two months ago, rookie head coach Ben Johnson has gotten much of the credit for the Bears’ script flip. He deserves every ounce of the credit he’s gotten. However, those who are serious students of the game, not just fans of the team, know there’s much more behind the change of the Bears’ fortunes than what has happened on the sidelines and in the locker room since last September.

The winds really began to change at Halas Hall, the Chicago Bears’ office and practice facility, several years ago. General Manager Ryan Pace hired John Fox as the head coach in 2015. He traded up one spot in the 2017 draft to take quarterback Mitch Trubisky second overall. Pace fired Fox after a 5-11 season, finishing in the cellar of the NFC North. He then hired Matt Nagy as head coach, hoping the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive coordinator could bring that high-powered offense to Soldier Field. After a promising first season in 2018, the Nagy-coached Bears finished 2021 with a 6-11 record. The shift in those winds began when the team fired Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy on the same day following that dismal season. 

Two weeks after the Bears cleaned house, the team hired Ryan Poles as their general manager. Poles wasn’t even crawling yet when the ’85 Bears won the team’s last Super Bowl. He was only four months old. The team’s long-tenured president, Ted Phillips, had some input during the search for a new GM. However, it was legendary NFL exec Bill Polian who team owner George McCaskey leaned on most heavily in hiring Poles. 

As GM, Poles has demonstrated excellent judgment in drafting players and negotiating trades with other teams. His deal with the Carolina Panthers ahead of the 2023 draft gave the Bears the first pick in 2024. That’s why Caleb Williams is the Bears quarterback who led this year’s team to their first playoff win in 15 years and instilled in Bears fans a reasonable hope for the future. That deal with the Panthers also gave the Bears DJ Moore, who led the team in receiving yards during his first two seasons and was involved in key plays in several of their late-game wins this year. 

Poles has also given Williams a solid offensive line. It’s something the Bears haven’t had in recent memory, and the reason Justin Fields never had a chance to live up to his potential in Chicago. 

Also critical to the Bears’ success has been Kevin Warren’s role as team president and CEO. Warren, who arrived a year after Poles, is the first team president to come from outside the organization. Previously, Warren served as Commissioner of the Big Ten Conference. During his tenure, the Big Ten expanded to 16 schools. He also negotiated a media contract that is currently generating a billion dollars annually. 

Warren’s future imprint on the team will include the Bears’ next stadium, which I still believe in my gut will be in the city of Chicago. His most important accomplishment as team president to date, however, was getting Ben Johnson as head coach. And that involved more than a commitment to a generous contract. Johnson asked Warren for, and received, a commitment to let him and GM Ryan Poles run football operations without interference from the president or ownership. With year one in the books, all indications are that Warren and McCaskey have lived up to that commitment. 

Finally, there’s been a change in the Bears’ ownership. No, the McCaskey family hasn’t sold the team. And I can’t imagine they ever would. However, to my eye, there is a big difference in the man who is the principal owner and chairman, George McCaskey. 

These last two seasons, McCaskey has been much more visible and accessible to Bears fans. Before home games, he can be seen wandering through the tailgate parties in the parking lot of Soldier Field and chatting with fans. That habit became very visible a few weeks ago, when the Bears hosted the Packers in week 16 of the season. McCaskey was posing with several Bears fans for a selfie when a visiting Packers fan attempted to photobomb the moment. McCaskey shoved the Packers fan away and stiff-armed him to keep the rival team’s rep out of the picture. 

Just three weeks later, the Bears faced the Packers again, eliminating their rivals from the playoffs at Soldier Field. During the first half, Bears linebacker TJ Edwards suffered a leg injury and had to be carted off the field. Television coverage of the game showed McCaskey running through the tunnel behind Edwards, carrying his helmet.  

The tailgating photo and the servant’s role in tending to a player are just two examples of how McCaskey has become more involved without interfering. He hasn’t been preening for the cameras like Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys. McCaskey is a workhorse, not a show horse. That is Chicago culture, through and through. 

While there is more I could write about the Bears’ season and the reasons I’m hopeful for their future, you may already get the point. I’m grateful that Ben Johnson is the head coach and Caleb Williams is the franchise quarterback they’ve long lacked. However, so many other elements and people have contributed to a shift in the team’s culture.

Regardless of where your name appears in an organizational chart, leadership is a team effort. A moribund church that regains its health and vitality is never the result of just one person. A business that has lost money for years, but begins to see profitability and growth, has countless untold stories and unseen people behind those results. If we are in a point leadership role, this reality should keep us humble. If we are not, we can enjoy the satisfaction of the fruit of our efforts even when no one else notices. 

Enjoy your weekend! 

The views and opinions expressed in my Thursday Thoughts on Leadership are my own. They do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina or any affiliated churches.