{"id":368484,"date":"2025-09-14T22:48:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T22:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/368484\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T22:48:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T22:48:14","slug":"bears-fall-to-0-2-under-new-coach-ben-johnson-as-qb-caleb-williams-has-another-uneven-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/368484\/","title":{"rendered":"Bears fall to 0-2 under new coach Ben Johnson as QB Caleb Williams has another uneven performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

DETROIT (AP) \u2014 The Chicago Bears<\/a> hired Ben Johnson away from Detroit, hoping he could help Caleb Williams become a consistent quarterback and turn around a franchise that hasn’t had a winning record in several years.<\/p>\n

So far, not so good.<\/p>\n

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The Detroit Lions routed Chicago<\/a> 52-21 on Sunday, showing their former offensive coordinator that they’re just fine on offense without him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of prideful guys,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe\u2019re two games into the season. We\u2019re committed to getting this thing right. I have a lot of belief in them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A week after losing an 11-point lead in the fourth quarter at home to Minnesota, the Bears never led and were dominated on both sides of the ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not really necessarily surprising or anything like that,” Williams said. \u201cNew coach. New offense. A bunch of new players, and we\u2019re all trying to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Clearly, they’ve got a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n

Williams started strong for the second straight week, going 9 of 11 for 79 yards and a touchdown in the first quarter.<\/p>\n

And once again, he faded and looked a lot like he did during an uneven rookie season after Chicago chose him No. 1 overall in 2024.<\/p>\n

Williams finished 19 of 30 for 207 yards with two touchdown passes to Rome Odunze, tying the game in the opening quarter and pulling the Bears within a touchdown in the second.<\/p>\n

He threw some errant passes and made at least one, ill-advised decision to pass the ball downfield in the face of pressure instead of throwing it out of bounds in the second quarter.<\/p>\n

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The Bears turned the ball over twice in the first half, leading to a 28-14 deficit. They turned it over on downs in each half and had eight penalties, including some for false starts after that was a problem in Week 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to hang our heads and get down,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt\u2019s one game. We\u2019re going to be just fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams was taken out midway through the fourth quarter because Johnson said the game was out of reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour guys are on the field and you\u2019re not, and that\u2019s frustrating,\u201d Williams said. \u201cIt\u2019s Coach’s decision and you have to move on from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lions rushed Williams aggressively and they had four sacks, a week after not having one in a loss to Green Bay.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe were taking punches,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

Chicago’s defense did, too.<\/p>\n

The Lions had more than 500 yards on offense with five passing touchdowns and two scores on the ground for the first time in franchise history, and averaged a team-record 8.8 yards per play with offensive coordinator John Morton calling plays instead of Johnson.<\/p>\n

The Lions were three points from matching a franchise record for points in a game in the regular season, and the Bears were three points from tying the most they\u2019ve allowed.<\/p>\n

It was not the return to Detroit that Johnson wanted, but he insisted it won’t get him down.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt is not demoralizing at all,\u201d Johnson insisted. \u201cWe have to play better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bears will have to hope to get some banged-up players back on defense before they host the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Starting defensive back Kyler Gordon (hamstring) was inactive, then linebacker T.J. Edwards (hamstring) and defensive back Jaylon Johnson (groin) left the game with injuries in Detroit.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NFL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nfl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT (AP) \u2014 The Chicago Bears hired Ben Johnson away from Detroit, hoping he could help Caleb Williams…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[1035,1036,391,257,146,113,2506,7,16149,4422,147,233,6,2495,7402,4378],"class_list":{"0":"post-368484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-ben-johnson","9":"tag-caleb-williams","10":"tag-chicago-bears","11":"tag-dallas-cowboys","12":"tag-detroit","13":"tag-detroit-lions","14":"tag-detroitlions","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-jaylon-johnson","17":"tag-kyler-gordon","18":"tag-lions","19":"tag-minnesota","20":"tag-nfl","21":"tag-rome-odunze","22":"tag-t-j-edwards","23":"tag-the-lions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115205092615441200","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}