Bear Digest

Why Ben Johnson represents a historical hire for the Bears

The team always making the wrong decisions appears to have made the right decision this time and it's a unique event because of their process.
Gene Chamberlain|
Ben Johnson as a Bears coaching hire is historical not necessarily because of his skills but because of the process.
Ben Johnson as a Bears coaching hire is historical not necessarily because of his skills but because of the process. | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

Ben Johnson's hiring represents a first for the Bears.

They have gone out and hired the man everyone wanted, the hot candidate. The innovative Lions offensive coordinator has been pursued by the Raiders and the Jaguars and the Bears did enough to land him.

This isn't the reason it's a first, though.

The Bears have done that before. When Michael McCaskey hired Dave Wannstedt, he nabbed the hot prospect. Everyone in the NFL was talking about the young Dallas Cowboys assistant as Jimmy Johnson's team dominated the league and was en route to winning the Super Bowl.

They did the same thing when they hired Matt Nagy. The Chiefs' assistant had been at the top of many lists and the Bears were proud to present him to Chicago.

Neither one really worked out.

They've brought in retreads like John Fox, an NFL reject who went to Canada in Marc Trestman and found Lovie Smith after they failed to hire Nick Saban and rejected Russ Grimm.

The hired Dick Jauron after McCaskey first hired Dave McGinnis but then didn't quite iron out the details of their agreement and announced the hiring. McGinnis fled town from O'Hare with a group of reporters in tow wanting to know exactly what happened, while poor Ted Phillips had to stand directly in the hot TV lights at Halas Hall and put a smiley face on it all with sweat dripping off his face.

It is here where the Bears have finally succeeded.

As Ryan Poles just said at his season-ending press conference, it's process over result, and sometimes then the right result happens.

The process this time was correct. They interviewed as many people as they could find, people no one even would have ever considered along with the obvious. It seemed like too many people, but they were making certain and they did it all with transparency.

In the end, the obvious and best candidate was right there for them whether Tom Brady and Mark Davis liked it or not.

Tom Pelissero of NFL Network said on AM-670 that they began the financial discussion Monday morning. It seems they not only did a thorough process but spent what they needed to spend.

They didn't need Bill Polian and Phillips and a couple other people joining George McCaskey in a panel to hunt down candidates.

They didn't need a search committee to find possible candidates the way they did when they hired Jerry Angelo. They didn't use their own judgment like when they hired one of their own, Phil Emery.
They were only using the search committee if they thought they needed more background on a candidate.

And the report from Adam Schefter is they even brought in a coach with someone he apparently has in mind already for the defensive coordinator, former Saints coach Dennis Allen. They didn’t have a holdover coordinator issue like the Mike Ditka-Buddy Ryan friction, or the situation where the coordinator is going to be looking to escape as a head coach like with Vic Fangio. Allen is a well-known commodity and if someone had wanted him they could have simply hired him as head coach.

This couldn't be more ideal. It's a coach who has had a dominant defense numerous times in his career and someone who has been a head coach and can provide some guidance for a head coach new to the situation.

The Bears will have an innovative head coach, one the whole league seemed to admire and they’re taking him away from a division rival.

They didn't do it by hiring a guy who has the same agent as the general manager. His agent is Rick Smith of Highland Park.

The Bears finally got this right and it's historical from the viewpoint that they did it the right way. There's no telling how many other decisions they can make now if they did this the right way and arrived at the correct conclusion.

They might get a lot of them right in the future by doing things the right way. Process instead of result can yield the right result.

The only explanation for all of this is they had someone in charge directing it with executive competence for a change, team president Kevin Warren.

Now, if only he can get the stadium built with the same effectiveness.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.