It wasn’t a playoff game. It wasn’t even a prime-time showcase.
It was a late-season Sunday at Soldier Field, wind cutting off Lake Michigan, gray skies pressing down like the weight of years. The Chicago Bears trailed the Detroit Lions by four points, two minutes left on the clock. Fans were hoarse from decades of hope and heartbreak — and yet, for one fleeting drive, they believed again.

Justin Fields rolled to his right, evading the rush. Darnell Mooney streaked toward the corner, separation by inches. The pass left Fields’ hand in a tight spiral — perfect, poised — until Lions cornerback Cam Sutton undercut it. The interception didn’t just end a drive; it punctured an era. The roar of 60,000 turned into silence thick enough to taste.

That play — the one everyone remembers as the collapse — marked the beginning of the end for one coaching regime and quietly, the start of the next.

Because on the opposite sideline, calling plays with surgical precision and an almost prophetic calm, was Ben Johnson.

II. The Rise of a Name Chicago Couldn’t Ignore

To understand why that moment mattered, you have to rewind.
The Bears’ 2024 season had been a slow-motion car crash — flashes of potential buried under turnovers, conservative play calls, and locker-room frustration. Fields, once billed as the franchise savior, looked adrift. Offensive coordinator Shane Waldron’s system sputtered, and Matt Eberflus’ defense, though disciplined, couldn’t mask an offense that averaged under 18 points per game.

Meanwhile, two states east, the Detroit Lions were rewriting the NFC North hierarchy. Their offensive engine — young, creative, fearless — was Ben Johnson, the 38-year-old coordinator who’d turned Jared Goff into a precision machine. Every motion, every formation felt like choreography: pre-snap chaos that unfolded into post-snap poetry.

When the Bears blew that fourth-quarter lead to Detroit — the first of the two plays that would define their next nine months — Johnson’s fingerprints were all over it. He dialed up a dagger concept that split Chicago’s zone like glass. Amon-Ra St. Brown hauled it in, 32 yards downfield, cutting through defenders like a whisper through fog. That drive buried Chicago.

For Bears fans, it was agony. For ownership, it was revelation.

III. A City Haunted by Its Own Offense

Chicago is a city that understands defense like it understands winter — tough, inevitable, and often the only thing that keeps you standing. But offense? Offense has been the Bears’ ghost for decades.

Walter Payton’s brilliance, Devin Hester’s lightning, the brief flame of Jay Cutler — none ever coalesced into sustained power. Every year, another coordinator promised reinvention. Every January, the same silence.

The loss to Detroit in November was different because it showed something impossible to unsee: how easily it could be done right. The Bears didn’t just lose — they were out-schemed, out-timed, and out-thought. The contrast was surgical.

And from that moment, inside Halas Hall, Ben Johnson’s name began circulating in whispers.

IV. The Second Play — and the Breaking Point

Fast-forward six weeks.
Week 18. Soldier Field again, the final game of the season. The Bears were playing the Packers, but everyone knew the real opponent was the ticking clock of a doomed regime.

Early third quarter, the Bears faced 3rd-and-5 on their own 40. They trailed by three. Johnson wasn’t there, but his shadow was — his Lions were locking up a playoff spot, and Chicago was once again testing its identity.

The play call came in: a predictable shallow cross, designed to get DJ Moore open for a modest gain. But the Packers had studied it. Cornerback Jaire Alexander jumped the route. Pick-six. Season over.

That interception — the second play that defined the nine months — wasn’t just another turnover. It became the final proof that the Bears’ offense was stale, outdated, and uninspired.

Within 48 hours, Chicago’s leadership called for an internal review. A month later, Eberflus was dismissed.