LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Ben Johnson spent plenty of time studying Sean McVay’s offense, though not necessarily for a moment like this.
Back then, he wanted to know what worked for Jared Goff; now he’ll try to stop Matthew Stafford. And the stakes are high with Johnson’s second-seeded Chicago Bears set to host McVay’s fifth-seeded Los Angeles Rams with a spot in the NFC championship game on the line in the divisional-round matchup Sunday evening at Soldier Field.
Johnson, the former Detroit Lions offensive coordinator in his first season as a head coach, said McVay — who, like Johnson is 39, but already in his ninth season as a head coach — “does a phenomenal job. He has ever since he’s gotten to L.A. All of his teams are really well prepared.”
And not just in one aspect, he noted.
“There’s no doubt that he’s super sharp in the offensive side,” Johnson said, “but I think how he does it as a head coach, bringing all three phases together is really critical to their success. I think he does a great job, knows how to speak to the team with the pulse of the team and get the most out of them. There’s a reason why they’re in it every year since he’s been there.”
Johnson was the tight ends coach in Detroit when the Lions kicked off a roster rebuild with a quarterback swap, trading Stafford to the Rams for Goff and several draft picks (including two first-rounders) after the 2020 season.
As Johnson kept rising on Detroit’s staff, so did his demand on the job market, leading to the opportunity for a lead role in Chicago — and one he hasn’t wasted while orchestrating a remarkable turnaround for the Bears.
Chicago went from worst to first in the NFC North and posted a winning record — going 12-6 in the recently completed regular season — for the first time since the 2018 team also won the division. Quarterback Caleb Williams, the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NFL draft, took big steps in his second year with the Bears, who advanced in the playoffs for the first time since the 2010 season by rallying for a 31-27 wild-card victory last weekend over the seventh-seeded Green Bay Packers, one of their division rivals.
Chicago trailed by as many as 18 points on the way to its seventh fourth-quarter comeback win, outscoring the Packers 25-6 in the final period.
The Rams, who won the Super Bowl four years ago, established themselves as championship contenders during an 11-3 start this season before sputtering a bit down the stretch to finish 12-5 heading into the postseason and wind up third in the highly competitive NFC West. And they needed Stafford — an All-Pro for the first time this season at age 37 — to lead one of his vintage comebacks against the fourth-seeded Carolina Panthers last weekend. Stafford threw a perfectly placed 19-yard touchdown pass to Colby Parkinson with 38 seconds left, lifting the Rams to a 34-31 win and the privilege to travel some more in the playoffs.
Now two teams with high-powered offenses and a flair for the dramatic are set to go at it.
“Ben does a good job of being able to create matchups,” McVay said. “They mix up their personnel. They’ve got backs that can obviously run the football, but they’ve got skills in the pass game with tight ends and receivers that can do the same thing. It’s a great challenge.”
Indeed, the Bears were third in the NFL in rushing during the regular season. They’re just not getting those big ground gains in recent weeks.
Chicago was the only team with two 750-yard rushers this season, with veteran D’Andre Swift running for 1,087 yards and rookie Kyle Monangai going for 783, but the Bears have struggled to run the ball the past two games.
They fell into an early hole against Green Bay and finished with 93 yards on the ground after being held to a season-low 65 in a loss to Detroit. With the forecast calling for single-digit temperatures Sunday in Chicago, being able to count on an old-school approach couldn’t hurt.
“Certainly, late in the season, we wanted that to pick up, playoffs, weather games like this,” Johnson said. “You certainly want to be able to lean on your run game. So those are some elements we’re looking at. What can we do to help ignite that? It’s both efficient runs to stay on track and ahead of the chains, and also explosive runs as well. Where can we find a few of those?”
Williams has helped make the offense’s lagging ground game not matter quite so much. He passed his first postseason test by setting a franchise playoff record with 361 passing yards, connecting for two late touchdowns against the Packers.
He has gotten increasingly more comfortable in his first year under Johnson, throwing for a franchise-record 3,942 yards after a shaky rookie season. And now Williams has a chance to become the fourth Bears quarterback to win multiple games in a single postseason — he would join Sid Luckman (1941), Jim McMahon (1985) and Rex Grossman (2006) — and, just maybe, silence a few more doubters.
“It’s a little extra motivation in that sense,” Williams said. “But it’s not for me to prove them wrong. I know who I am.”
Football fans in Los Angeles know all about Williams’ elusiveness from his two years at the University of Southern California, where he was the Heisman Trophy winner for the 2022 season, and the Rams’ defensive front knows just how hard it will be to corral him.
The Rams’ 47 sacks in the regular season were tied for third among teams that made the playoffs, though, and their pass rush is likely their defense’s strength, with Jared Verse and Byron Young attacking from the edge while Braden Fiske and Kobie Turner apply pressure up the middle.
“We know how he can extend plays and scramble to pick up first downs,” Turner said. “It’s a big challenge to get him on the ground. That’s where so much of their explosives come from.”