For most of the 2025–26 season, everything broke right for Ben Johnson and the Chicago Bears.
A first-year head coach. An 11–6 record. An NFC North title that few outside the building predicted. A playoff win over Green Bay that felt like a symbolic shift in power. Even the divisional-round loss to the Rams came down to a handful of plays.
By almost every metric that matters in Chicago, this season was a success.
And yet, as the offseason begins, Johnson just received news that quietly changes how this breakthrough will be remembered.
Johnson was officially nominated for NFL Coach of the Year — a deserved recognition — but the competition around him is fierce. Mike Macdonald has the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. Mike Vrabel engineered a Patriots revival. Kyle Shanahan and Liam Coen remain fixtures in the league’s upper tier of respect.
In other words: Johnson may have arrived early, but the league isn’t ready to hand him the crown.
That’s the uncomfortable truth hiding beneath the celebration.
Coach of the Year is rarely about progress alone. It’s about narrative dominance. About separation. About finishing the story. Johnson’s Bears took a massive step forward — but they didn’t close the book.
That distinction matters more than fans want to admit.
Chicago didn’t just lose to the Rams in the divisional round. They lost control of the final chapter. The Bears led. They competed. They pushed the game into overtime. And then it ended — not with triumph, but with questions.
Johnson didn’t hide from that.
“Our guys fought the entire way,” he said afterward. “Disappointing result. Our guys are feeling it right now.”
That word — feeling — keeps surfacing around this team.
For a franchise starved of sustained success, 2025–26 delivered belief. But belief quickly turns into expectation. And expectation is where seasons like this become dangerous. Once a team proves it can win, coming up short stops being charming.
That’s why the Coach of the Year race feels like bad news, even if it’s technically an honor.
It reinforces a reality the Bears can’t ignore: they’re no longer the feel-good story. They’re the team that has to prove it again.
Johnson has already framed the loss as fuel.
“This will be hopefully a feeling in this locker room that we won’t forget,” he said.
That sentiment is familiar. Every coach says it. But in Chicago’s case, it carries weight. Because the Bears didn’t lose due to inexperience or lack of talent. They lost because another team made two or three more plays when it mattered most.
That’s the thin margin Johnson must now live in.
The league’s best coaches don’t get rewarded for almosts. They get rewarded for finishes. And as long as the Bears are watching other coaches prepare for the Super Bowl, Johnson’s season — as impressive as it was — will sit just short of the league’s highest recognition.
That’s the bad news.
The good news? Johnson now understands exactly what the league expects next.
Winning the division isn’t enough anymore.
Beating Green Bay isn’t enough anymore.
Even being nominated isn’t enough.
The Bears didn’t just announce themselves in 2025. They set a standard they now have to meet — or exceed.
And if this season taught Johnson anything, it’s that the NFL doesn’t wait long before asking one brutal question:
Was that real — or was that the peak?
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