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Ben Johnson Talking Out of His Rear End as He Claims That Everyone is Writing Off the Bears
By Matt Schultz
Published:
The Eagles are at the Bears for a Monday Night Football matchup in Week 3, and with Caleb Williams banged up after the most dramatic hamstring injury of all time, Ben Johnson has to figure out who’s starting at quarterback:
It’s a mildly challenging problem to have, and one that countless other coaches have week-to-week with rosters full of banged-up guys. But, according to Johnson, the Caleb predicament has the rest of the NFL completely writing off the Bears, which is exactly where the Bears want to be:
According to Johnson, the Bears are pretty much Rocky going up against Apollo Creed in Rocky 1. Or the American hockey team against the Soviets in 1980. Or Captain Jack Sparrow against Davy Jones/other enemies in the later Pirates movies. These have been on TNT a good amount lately. Forgot they released one in 2017. I watched a couple minutes of the 2017 one the other day while eating dinner and Jack Sparrow had his head in a guillotine. Needless to say, I completely wrote him off. He had no shot, I thought. And that’s how Ben Johnson thinks we see the Bears:
But hearing Ben Johnson say this stuff, you can’t help but wonder: what the hell is he talking about? Who’s writing off the Bears? No one’s writing off the Bears. The Bears are good. The Bears are at home. Even without Caleb Williams, they still have a solid blueprint to win. Chicago leads the NFL in rushing with a massive 212.5 yards per game on the ground. Their defense is very good. They held Minnesota to just 9 points (3 field goals) and 143 passing yards in Week 2 after the Vikings put up 39 the week before against Green Bay.
And it’s not like the Eagles look like a juggernaut so far. Jalen Hurts threw two interceptions in Week 2. The run game looks rough. The offense is terrible on early downs. The offensive line looks shaky. Dallas Goedert is out. Saquon Barkley is banged up. There’s a reason the Bears were favored by 1.5 before Caleb Williams got hurt. So again, what the hell is Ben Johnson talking about? How’s he gonna act like the Bears are 2017 Jack Sparrow? How’d he land there?
The answer is he is simply making stuff up. Trying to get an underdog, us-against-the-world narrative going to hype up his players. And overall, I’m not against this kind of approach. There are only so many buttons a coach can push. This is one of those buttons. I get it.
But this one’s a stretch, Ben. Don’t think it’s going to work. I recommend trying another button. Also recommend watching the 2017 Pirates movie. The few minutes I saw were good for watching dinner.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com