The Chicago Bears hired a rookie head coach to turn things around. And while the early returns show vast improvements on offense, there will be some growing pains.
Ben Johnson might want a redo of one of his last decisions in Monday night’s loss to the Minnesota Vikings. Instead of going for a touchback or kicking the ball out of bounds after scoring a touchdown to cut the Vikings’ lead to three, the Bears allowed Minnesota to return the kickoff, ultimately taking crucial time off the clock.
Interestingly enough, NFL legend Peyton Manning told Johnson exactly what to do before it happened.
“Kick it out of bounds. Take the penalty, it’s on the 40… now you’ve got the timeout and the two-minute warning,” Manning said on the ManningCast, per PFT. “Out of bounds. Not out of the end zone, out of bounds.”
The former quarterback was disappointed and couldn’t believe Johnson’s decision there. It wound up costing the team valuable seconds it could’ve used in the final drive of the game.
“They would have had a lot of time,” Manning said. “The defense did their job and stopped it. I just don’t know if I have time to be the Bears’ analytics guy and do this show.”
At the end of the day, there are plenty of reasons to feel excited about the Bears, and the Vikings also deserve all the credit in the world for their comeback win. It was an up-and-down performance from the first-year head coach. He also chose to go for it on fourth down, instead of taking the points, despite facing a top-tier defense, taking a page out of Dan Campbell’s book. Hopefully, unlike Campbell has shown at times, Johnson will learn from his mistakes.
