The Chicago Bears were a fractured team by the end of 2024. They'd seen their head coach fired after the locker room boiled over following the brutal loss on Thanksgiving in Detroit. Players were cynical and uncertain about their future. Any head coach coming in would have the herculean task of rebuilding trust and getting guys to buy in. Ben Johnson may have been on the younger side when the team hired him in January, but he wasn't naive. If he was going to get guys motivated, he could not for one second make it seem as if he was being disengenuous.
He had an idea. It was a poem he'd learned while playing football in high school. His team chanted it after every win, and it became their rallying cry. It was called "Good, Better, Best." By now, most Bears fans have heard it more than once. It has become wildly popular. However, Johnson knew the hard part would be selling it to the locker room. These weren't a bunch of impressionable high school kids. These were grown men. According to Kevin Fishbain of The Athletic, the first attempt at the speech wasn't well-received.
Johnson knew he'd have to sell it.
On Aug. 17, after the Bears beat the Bills 38-0 in the preseason, Johnson gathered his players in the locker room.
“Good, better, best!”
“When he first did it, we were kind of like, what’s going on?” safety Kevin Byard said. “He’s just like, ‘Just repeat after me,’ and we’re just like ‘Uh’, just looking around like, ‘OK?’”
Johnson wasn’t nervous. But this wasn’t a high school team. These were professional football players.
“They kind of looked at me like I was crazy the first time or two,” he said. “Particularly some of the guys — you know, not everyone played in that game, so they’re kind of like, ‘What is going on here?’”
Seven wins later, and “Good, better, best” is taking over Chicago.
“At first, like, it’s funny, those things are cheesy until they’re not,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “The more you win and the more you feed into it, it becomes part of your culture and your identity of the team.”
Ben Johnson never wavered.
He kept pushing it. Once the wins began piling up, players started to believe in the maxim. Soon, all of them were shouting the chant at full volume. Now the Bears are 7-3 and have their first real opportunity to chase a playoff spot in five years. Ben Johnson is leading the way, both with his words and his actions. The Bears' offense is one of the best in the NFL, ranking 2nd in rushing. There is no longer any debate about whether hiring him was a good decision. It's fast becoming one of the best the organization has made in at least a decade.
Time will tell if they can reach the finish line. Injuries are piling up, and the schedule keeps getting tougher. Yet the mantra remains unchanged. The Bears are striving to get better every day. If they do that, they will eventually be the best. That is the goal. It is how Johnson got this far in his career. He aims to help them do the same.
