Ben Johnson is not mincing words about where he feels the Chicago Bears are as a team just two games into his head coaching tenure.
In their regular season opener, the Bears blew an 11-point lead in the fourth quarter to J.J. McCarthy and the Minnesota Vikings, then came back in Week 2 to get ran over by the Detroit Lions 52-21, leaving more questions than answers.
Speaking to the media this week ahead of the Bears’ matchup against the Dallas Cowboys, Johnson said the practice habits do not reflect those of a “championship caliber team” at the early stage of the season. Never mind a championship caliber team, the Bears need to just pick up their first win of the regular season and take a week-by-week approach, which starts with practice.
“Our practice habits are yet to reflect a championship-caliber team,” Johnson said when meeting with the media on Wednesday. “We should be going to the football, finishing hard. We talk about it all the time with the offensive players that our fundamentals, our finish and our technique, they need to show up in walk through, they need to show up on the practice field. That’s how it shows up on game day. Simple things of, ‘How do we properly block? How do we catch the ball? How do we block after the catch?’ Ball security and things like that. It’s the little things that you learn in youth league football that even at this level, they make a huge difference.”
There is a bit of discouragement in hearing that the team still struggles on the practice field, especially when the head coach is comparing lessons learned in youth football. However, correcting everything from the top to bottom with the football operations of this team, should make for a quick turnaround, so long as the players get in line with the system and make the necessary changes.
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