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The Chicago Bears have not fielded a true star quarterback in decades, so it makes sense that Caleb Williams immediately became the face of the franchise after his breakout season in 2025.
However, there's someone else who deserves just as much, if not more, credit for Chicago's success last year, and this person is the reason that one NFL analyst listed the Bears as actual Super Bowl contenders.
That person is head coach Ben Johnson.
Ben Johnson's true genius shows in the margins Writing for Sports Illustrated, NFL analyst Conor Orr published his list of 14 teams that can actually win Super Bowl LXI, and the Chicago Bears finally made the cut.
But in explaining his reasoning, Orr mentioned quarterback Caleb Williams just once, and that was in reference to Williams' Madden 27 cover appearance.
The reason why Orr thinks the Bears could win Super Bowl LXI is that they are coached by Ben Johnson.
"The Bears thrived [in 2025] amid the largest question that, I felt, plagued the team going into Ben Johnsons inaugural season: Could he create explosive plays as efficiently with the Bears as he could with a star-studded Lions offense.
The answer was a resounding yes," Orr writes, and he's not wrong.
Chicago's offense was must-see TV last year, and while Williams was often the focal point as the guy who actually threw the football, it was all made possible by Johnson's schemes.
As for the case against the Bears, specifically the claim that they won't be able to pull off so many one-score wins again, Orr writes, "I still think Johnson is one of the leagues elite play-callers, who will be setting the pace for what is schematically possible this season.
Because of that, sometimes one-score wins represent less of a fluke and more of a fact that Johnson is simply calling better plays in bigger moments than other offensive play-callers." I have my own problem with the oft-repeated critcism of Chicago's narrow margins of victory last year, namely that they still lost several one-score games.
Including the playoffs they went 8-5 in such scenarios, hardly a statistical outlier.
But Orr's stance, that maybe Ben Johnson is just better than other coaches in crunch time, also holds up.
We'll know if the Bears are true contenders or not by November Whether Orr is right about the Bears as legit contenders is up for debate, and that debate shouldn't last very long.
The Chicago Bears' 2026 schedule is a tough one, and they face several quality opponents early in the year.
In fact, I think the Bears will tell us everything we need to know about them after their Week 8 meeting with the Seattle Seahawks.
After that critical Monday night matchup, the Bears will have faced both Super Bowl teams from last year, the Super Bowl champions from 2024, and two tough divisional tests.
The Bears of the last 15 years or so would come out flat and lose all five of these games.
But these Bears are not your father's Bears.
With Ben Johnson at the helm, I would expect the Bears to win no fewer than three of these five matchups.
Assuming they handle their business in the other four games before their Week 10 bye, that would put the Bears at 7-2 on the season and likely at the top of the NFC North once again.
At that point, it would be impossible to deny any longer that the Bears are indeed back.
The Bottom Line All that said, Johnson was far from perfect in his debut season with the Bears.
There were times when his playcalling left us scratching our heads, and others when his aggression on fourth down cost the Bears critical points in a close game, most notably the Bears' heartbreaking Divisional round loss to the Rams.
Additionally, the NFL has now had a full offseason to digest the tape on Johnson's offense, and they'll be ready for him in 2026.
Johnson will have his work cut out for him to stay ahead of defenses in 2026, and he'll have to make adjustments to account for new personnel at wide receiver and along the offensive line, but I have no doubt that he can navigate these roadblocks.
The warnings of a crash-back-to-Earth season for the Bears are real, but Ben Johnson is the reason why these regression forecasts are iffy at best.
I won't go so far as to project the Bears to make a Super Bowl appearance, especially not since they'd have to go through an L.A.
Rams team that has become an absolute juggernaut after trading for Myles Garrett.
But Orr's reasons for including the Bears as a contender are sound, and I agree whole-heartedly.
And if the Bear do pull it off and bring a tenth NFL title home to Chicago, Ben Johnson will be immortalized in the Windy City.