The Chicago Bears started the season 0-2. Everybody thought they were destined to go after the #1 pick again. Nine weeks later, they're 7-3 and in sole possession of first place in the NFC North. Nobody in their right mind thought this was possible, at least not this year. It was supposed to take a season for head coach Ben Johnson to get acclimated and start building the culture he wants. Instead, thanks to a remarkable streak of resiliency involving five 4th quarter comebacks, the Bears are suddenly in the NFC playoff picture.
To the surprise of nobody, Chicago media members couldn't wait to ask him about the team's prospects of playing January football for the first time since 2020. Johnson couldn't shoot down those attempts fast enough.
"We’re way far away from that. I haven’t been thinking about that. We’re really in the third quarter of the season. … We’re in a good spot right now for where we want to be at this quarter of the season and we have a tough opponent coming in here on Sunday."
This isn't a surprising reaction. Johnson has operated on the thought process of playing the season by quarters. The goal is to achieve a 3-1 record in each quarter. The Bears were 2-2 in the first and 3-1 in the second. They are 2-0 so far in the third. The last thing Johnson needs is for his players to daydream about the playoffs when there are still seven games left to play.
Ben Johnson isn't dumb enough to tempt the football gods.
They are notorious for punishing teams that start to get a high opinion of themselves too early in a playoff push. Plenty of teams had similar starts like this and watched it all fizzle away down the stretch. Ben Johnson knows the biggest hurdle for the Bears to clear will be December. That month has haunted this franchise in years past. It led to Lovie Smith's firing in 2012 when he went 1-3 that month. The same was true of Matt Nagy in 2021. Johnson has said multiple times that his goal was to get the Bears playing their best football in December.
They haven't reached that point yet. Until that changes, Johnson will not even entertain the idea of discussing the "P" word inside Halas Hall. Everything this week is about the Pittsburgh Steelers. A win assures that critical third victory of the quarter.
