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Ben Johnson had a clear message in his end-of-season press conference | Take The North
23 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What was the mood inside Halas Hall during the press conference?
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Chapter 2: How did Ben Johnson's message differ from past seasons?
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I want to know from you. I've been covering the Bears since 2018. You've been covering the Bears since... 2013. Since... 2013. 2013. How would you describe the vibe of this particular press conference, which always occurs in some way, shape, or form, whether GM and coach, sometimes owner, maybe sometimes you'd have team president like Ted Phillips speak in the past.
How would you describe the day? What are your overall just impressions of sort of the peripheral and the message that was given relative to other post-mortem types
Chapter 3: What were the key decisions facing the Bears this offseason?
um meetings like this one we had today at house hall it's a good question because it was different today it was different in the structure uh as you mentioned usually we do hear from george mccaskey and the team president after these gatherings and they do a separate session out in the midway there at house hall that did not occur today i understand why they probably would make that decision and keep the focus on ben and ryan in the football season and not introduce everything that that might come up as far as the stadium goes
it also because the bears won the division and won a playoff game it was less of an inquest and more of a you know an assessment conversation about the bears right like there weren't these hot button issues where we had to demand answers to try to get a feel for what the direction of the franchise is which is usually the state of these end of season press conferences even in 2018 when the bears made it to the playoffs and won the division and had that dream run which we've talked about a thousand times on this podcast
That NFC's impressor included several questions about the kicker going on the Today Show to take a victory lap for how well he handled missing the double doink kick, which added an element of what the is this, right? And so there wasn't any of that today. There was, I think, for optics purposes, there was one podium, right, for the first time in my recollection today.
The head coach stood up there by himself, and then the GM stood up there by himself. And that clearly is a decision that the Bears made, that these two men weren't going to sit side by side and take questions together, which to me, and you can tell me if you interpret it differently, was disappointing.
The latest firm declaration of who's running the show here, who's at the steering wheel, it's Ben Johnson. And so he was the headliner of the program, and then Ryan Poles came after him. So those are, for me, some of the distinct differences between what today was and what the previous, I guess it would be 12 previous end of season pressers that I've covered have been.
Yeah. Yeah. They want him to be the voice of the Bears. They want Ben Johnson to be the voice. I don't know if singular necessarily, but pretty close to being the singular voice.
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Chapter 4: How does Ryan Poles' role compare to Ben Johnson's in team decisions?
I mean, at the same time, you know, Ben Johnson was quick to credit Ryan Poles and say that he learned a lot from Ryan Poles in terms of personnel and how they go about scouting and all of that kind of thing, which does tell me that, you likes to just assume that Ben Johnson is the one, you know, buying the ingredients, so to speak, as Bill Parcells once said, and doing the drafting.
You know, Ryan Poles is still doing a bleep ton of work in that regard and still leads that party. Oh, sure. Yeah, I would imagine, yeah, Ben Johnson has, for $13 million a year, he probably does have a little bit more say than his predecessors. Authority, yeah. But I do think it's a little bit overstated that Ryan Poles is not the main man.
I believe he is more into the draft and the acquisitions on this team than Ben Johnson in terms of what people sort of perceive it to be right now.
I've been turning down interviews all week. Hoda Kotb reached out, Oprah, George Stephanopoulos. So I said, no, I was booked on the Deitch podcast before the Taylor Swift phenomenon. I must live up to my responsibility. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.
And you need that connection to be harmonious. You need those two guys to be in lockstep with the vision and to go out and sort of attack it.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Ben Johnson foresee for the Bears moving forward?
I think it's notable because this is an offseason of heavy lifting, and it may not seem like it right now in the moment, less than 72 hours removed from that playoff loss. But again, they've got 24... players coming out of contract in early March. 20 of those are unrestricted free agents. That's a lot of decisions you have to make in-house before you even start to make decisions out-house, right?
And like, they're going to have to, not out-house, out of house. So they're going to have to find a way to kind of dump the puzzle pieces out on the table, Grody, and start to put them together in a way that positions this roster to be contention-worthy next season. And I think that's going to be difficult.
To Ben's credit, and I know we'll get into some of this as this episode goes along, to Ben's credit, he is not shying away from the idea that there is a lot of hard work that needs to be done and that, in his own words, he kept referring to 2025 as last season. Like, it just ended 72 hours ago, and he kept calling it last season.
And it's indicative of a guy who's forward-thinking at all times, and he's got no time for what they just accomplished with all that they want to strive for ahead.
I like it because you and I have talked about it, I believe, a million times now. I just looked it up. We talked about it a million times about how all these years of winning that the Bears have had, whether 2001, 2011, 2018, 2020, I guess ā
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Chapter 6: Why is sustaining success difficult for the Bears historically?
It was not sustainable the next year. The exception being 05-06. Those were back-to-back winning seasons for the Bears. But typically, and a lot of times, I know we're in our Bears bubble. That is the way it works in the NFL. Sustained success is difficult to attain. And Ben Johnson is determined to let us know that. And he is spot on about it.
yeah um you can tell me if you've got a bunch of ben audio to come so that we can hear from his voice but like 1988 is the last time that this franchise experienced three consecutive winning seasons right that's a target destination that's a goal and in order to get there you have to first acknowledge how hard it is to get there right like the first rule of sustaining success is is being able to quickly and emphatically
get it across the minds of everyone in your building how hard this is going to be. The Bears need no reminders of how hard this is because of all the stats and the years that we just cited, but yet it helps to hear that from the man at the top of the totem pole saying, today, again, we're into three-word reviews here on Take the North. Ben gave you a great one. Wasn't good enough.
That's his summary of the 2025 season. As fun and as exhilarating as it was, in his own words, it wasn't good enough, and he's correct.