Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson cannot be accused of lacking ambition.
Johnson won the NFC North in his first year as head coach and is looking for more than that in his second season. He is not just talking about the Super Bowl, either: he wants to see the Chicago offense have the highest-scoring offense in NFL history. He even has the exact numbers memorized.
“You’ve got 31 other teams coming to training camp saying, ‘Our goal is to win the Super Bowl. I want more than that,” Johnson said, via Dan Pompei of The Athletic. “I want to have the highest-scoring offense ever, which happens to be the 2013 Denver Broncos. I know how many points per game they scored (37.9), and I want to surpass them. I want shutouts. I want blowouts.”
For anyone doing the math, that Broncos team scored 606 points in a 17-week season. Last year’s Bears scored 441 points in an 18-week campaign, so they have some serious work to do to close that gap.
It should be noted that the 2013 Broncos did not, in fact, win the Super Bowl, suffering a 43-8 defeat to the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLVIII. Obviously, Johnson wants to best them offensively and win a championship on top of it.
Johnson’s goal is particularly ambitious when you remember that the Bears are, infamously, the only NFL franchise to have never had a 4,000-yard passer. Caleb Williams fell just 58 yards short last season and has an excellent chance of getting there in 2026, though Johnson doesn’t seem to care much about that mark.
We do know that Johnson’s intensity is second-to-none, so this should not come as a huge surprise. Some may find it odd, but in his mind, it’s a way to drive his players to be great.
