At his introductory press conference as head coach of the Chicago Bears, Ben Johsnon looked at the players in attendance, including quarterback Caleb Williams, and said, “Be comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
We’ve seen glimpses of this from him, with his intense attention to detail, getting on his players, not tolerating mistakes, and pulling his first team off the field to keep practice moving along.
But today we heard about a specific way that he’s making his quarterback uncomfortable.
At his post-practice press conference, offensive coordinator Declan Doyle was asked about a sequence where defensive end Montez Sweat got immediate pressure on Caleb, and his answer wasn’t what I was expecting.
“That’s very intentional,” Doyle said. “That’s trying to get our defensive pressures in against some of the stuff we’re going to do offensively. We have contingency plans for what they are going to bring at us, so the quarterback operating at getting the offense on the same page as far as checking plays, checking protections, things like that, but that’s all a part of the scripted practice, is trying to get the defense right with their pressure patterns and the way they’re going to play coverage on the back end and then it’s getting our quarterbacks used to whether we’re throwing the ball or up front handling the movement with those run schemes.”
Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer was at Halas Hall today, and in his latest article, he wrote about this very thing.
Ben Johnson’s Bears start practices with a “wake-up” period that’s 11-on-11 with intentional pressure coming from the defense on every snap. It’s part of the process the Bears are going through to accelerate two things with Williams. One is the amount he’s doing in what they call “P.S.P.” (presnap procedure). The other is the volume he’s getting to see from the defense, so he can apply more of the offense to what he’s seeing from an opponent. The idea was to have him drinking from a firehose in the spring, and keep the load on him to start camp, and then begin to narrow the offense down to what Johnson, OC Declan Doyle, and the staff think he does best. Getting there is just a process (and we’ll have more on it in the Monday takeaways).
This revelation comes on the heels of former NFL player J.J. Watt Tweeting about this very situational part of practice, but it’s not something we’ve ever heard of in Chicago.
Breer’s article has some other good nuggets, including his offensive line observations, some praise for backup running backs Roschon Johnson and Kyle Monangai, what he saw from the defensive line, and how middle linebacker Tremaine Edmunds “has taken to [Dennis] Allen’s scheme,” and is looking “more comfortable” and “playing free.”