KANSAS CITY, Mo. (WGN) — The official beginning of the Ben Johnson era is almost upon us. But first, the Chicago Bears travel to Arrowhead Stadium to face the Kansas City Chiefs as the 2025 preseason wraps up.
Here are five storylines to pay attention to on Friday night.
1. How long do the starters play and what weight will their playing time bear?
In a bit of a surprise from both head coaches, Andy Reid and Johnson both confirmed their starters will play Friday night in the two clubs’ preseason finale.
‘They’ll start it off, for sure, and then we’ll see how it goes from there,’’ Reid told Kansas City media on Monday.
24 hours later, Johnson followed suit when he made the announcement in an interview with Kay Adams on the Up & Adams Show.
“We’ll go ahead and we’ll play. We’ll see how long it is. We’re going to get through a couple [of] days here of practice, and we’ll determine for how long, but we need to go through this,” Johnson said.
Besides hopefully getting some clarity on several position battles, the contest serves as a true road test for Chicago’s starters.
While Caleb Williams looked comfortable slicing through a contingent of mediocre Buffalo Bills backups inside his home digs, how will he guide the Bears’ first-team offense in front of a hostile crowd with players like Chris Jones and George Karlaftis bearing down on him? How disruptive will Dennis Allen’s defense be against Reid, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce?
Even though it’s still the preseason and the starters on both sides of the gridiron will likely sit after one drive, the Chiefs’ defense won’t be as porous as Buffalo’s was last Sunday, and they are the ones who hold homefield advantage.
If Williams and the first-team offense can come out and put seven on the board at the end of their opening drive, it’ll be another box checked for Johnson, and add a little more grease as Bears fans rev up the fryers for Week 1 against the Minnesota Vikings.
2. Is Braxton Jones the Bears’ starting left tackle?
Braxton Jones got the first-team nod at left tackle against the Bills, but for most of training camp, who becomes Chicago’s starting left tackle has felt—at times—like a four-man game of duck-duck-goose.
At this point, it feels like Jones has the inside edge on the job, given Johnson and offensive line coach Dan Roushar have rotated Ozzy Trapilo back to working at his natural position (right tackle) on the second string behind Darnell Wright during practice, and Kiran Amegadjie has never risen above working with the third stringers.
That leaves Theo Benedet as the only other offensive tackle seemingly still in the fold.
Johnson confirmed Benedet took first-team reps at left tackle over the span of three practices last week, which included the Bears’ joint practice against the Bills, but was relegated back to the second-team afterward.
Does that mean he should be counted out of sweeping the starting spot out from under Jones’ feet? Benedet doesn’t think so.
“I think I’ve known since the start of camp that I had a shot at it. I took their word for it when they said that to the group, that the job was to be won,” Benedet said Tuesday. “Then, when we got out to practice, they go through the groupings, and they told me that I’d be taking snaps both with the ones and the twos that day. So, it just kind of happened naturally.”
3. Who will end up being corner No. 2?
The worst news that came out of Chicago’s Week 2 preseason matchup against Buffalo was Terell Smith going down with a season-ending knee injury. Johnson confirmed Smith tore the patellar tendon in his left knee on Wednesday and said he will be out for the rest of the season.
Smith was one of three corners vying for the No. 2 corner spot opposite of Jaylon Johnson, which now makes the competition a two-man race—Tyrique Stevenson versus Nahshon Wright.
Stevenson is the incumbent No. 2 going back to last season, but with Jaylon Johnson spending time on the sideline with a leg injury, Wright has seen additional reps with the ones.
What stands out about Wright is that, besides being a massive corner (his listed height is 6 feet 4 inches), he’s hit the ground running since signing with the Bears in early April, thanks in part to his past relationship with defensive backs coach Al Harris when the two were in Dallas together.
On the practice field, Wright has been a physical presence that’s put his length on display throughout training camp, which has earned him praise from Ben Johnson.
“He has been balling,” Johnson told ChicagoBears.com. “He got a lot of turnovers in the spring. I have full trust in him. He’s a veteran. Long corner. Being able to stick with some of these receivers. I really like what I have seen from him.”
4. Does the offensive execution carry over from their 38-0 win against the Bills?
528 total yards. 31 first downs. Ten pass plays of 15-plus yards. Five touchdowns. The Bears decimated the Bills, no matter who on the depth chart trotted out onto the field.
But that was at home.
Ben Johnson would very much like to carry over the momentum from Chicago’s demolition of Buffalo to Arrowhead Stadium, but crowd noise always makes execution more difficult. Especially before the snap.
Finding a way to keep the pre-snap procedure as clean as it was against the Bills will go a long way toward making sure they keep that momentum.
In 2024, the Bears finished tied for the fifth-most false starts (28) and illegal formations (6), and the 11th-most delay of game penalties (6) in the NFL, but on Sunday, Chicago had just one pre-snap infraction—tight end Stephen Carlson was called for a false start halfway through the third quarter.
For most of training camp, the Bears have been as crisp as the crunch of a potato chip after the snap, and if they get that off clean consistently against Kansas City, it’ll be all the easier to execute on offense.
5. Can the defensive line generate pressure on key downs like they did against the Bills?
Last week, it was Andrew Billings and Austin Booker coming up with third-down sacks on back-to-back drives to keep the floodgates open for Chicago
The two defensive linemen were the driving forces behind two consecutive Bills punts that turned into two consecutive Bears touchdowns, but where will that come from Friday?
Defensive coordinator Dennis Allen holds the philosophy that “a fresh body is better than a tired body.”
“Even though a guy may be your best rusher, if he’s played seven, eight snaps in a row, rushing the quarterback, that takes a lot of energy,” Allen said. “Probably rush No. 5 and 6, you don’t see the same quality of rusher. If you get a fresh guy out there with speed and athleticism, it helps you in terms of your rush. Having a deep defensive line group that can go rush the passer – you keep coming at them in waves.
“Typically, offensive linemen don’t rotate in and out, so when they play five, six, seven, eight snaps in a row, they’re not as fresh as they were to start the series. You throw a fresh body out there, and it’s a different speed coming at him.”
The Chiefs had a 108.9 passer rating with an 11-1 TD pass-to-interception ratio on third down in 2024, with the NFL’s third-best conversion rate at 47.3%.
A major boon for Allen’s defense would be to get Mahomes and the Kansas City offense off the field on their first (and likely, only) drive of the game.
When is kickoff?
The Kansas City Chiefs take on the Chicago Bears at Arrowhead Stadium, with kickoff set for 7:20 p.m. CT. The game will be carried by Fox 32 Chicago.