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2025 Week 18: Chicago Bears 16, Detroit Lions 19
- Updated: January 9, 2026
Most years, the job Ben Johnson has done this year would win him Coach of the Year. It may not this year because there are multiple other coaches whose work this season is worthy of the honor: Mike Vrabel in New England, Mike Macdonald in Seattle, Liam Coen in Jacksonville, and Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco all come to mind. There is only one award, so that means 4 deserving candidates won’t win it. If Ben Johnson is one of those guys, so be it. The lack of hardware doesn’t make his work this year any less great.
That being said, Ben Johnson is still a rookie head coach and there are moments that remind you of that fact. Week 18 was one of them. Coach Johnson said they were playing to win. The gameplan said otherwise. To be clear, “stay healthy and don’t put any good stuff on tape” is a perfectly cromulent gameplan for week 18 when the only stakes on the game are the 2 seed versus the 3. A theoretical second home playoff game is not worth risking injury to a key piece of the team, no matter how many folks on Twitter try to tell you that it is.
The problem with what the Bears did in week 18 is that they didn’t really commit to any strategy. They played the starters, but didn’t use the good stuff. Coach Johnson said he was disappointed with the offense. The problem there is that the offense is made up of grown adults. They are professionals. They are not stupid. They can see when the good stuff is not being deployed. And when they see that, they understand what that means.
The scene in Moneyball with Billy Beane and David Justice at the batting cage is a creation of Hollywood. But it is a great scene because it frequently serves as a quality reference. Here, Ben is David Justice and while nobody will even mistake me for Brad Pitt, at halftime, I was Billy Beane saying “let’s just be honest about what we’re doing here.” If what we saw Sunday was the plan, then Caleb and as many offensive linemen as possible should’ve been sitting. The idea that you always want to be playing to win is understandable, but you have to actually be doing so, otherwise, the effect is worse than anything that could be done by resting your starters because saying “we’re playing to win” and deploying that gameplan can hurt your credibility. Guys see through it and the result is what we saw Sunday: business decisions aplenty. Due to all of this, I did not grade this week’s tape, nor will I bother to do so after the season. The other four I need to catch up on will still get done.
A rookie head coach not knowing how to handle week 18 because your playoff position is mostly set is a good problem to have. I expect that Coach Johnson will learn from the experience and handle it better in the future. These are not the same old Bears: the QB is great and the coach is not an idiot. Now it’s time to show it on the big stage.
Four Stars of the Game
Nobody, out of principle. Otherwise, it would’ve been Loveland.
Colston Loveland
Caleb Williams
Jah’dae Walker
