Die-Hard Bears Fan Jake Johnson Is 100% in LOVE with Ben Johnson

Chicago has spent a long time waiting on a football answer, and Jake Johnson has been waiting right along with it. The Evanston native, who later lived in Lincoln Park and whose mother came out of Rogers Park, does not do detached fandom. He does die-hard. And he thinks the Bears finally hired the right kind of crazy.

"I think this is potentially one of the best chances the Bears have had in a long time," Jake Johnson said on the show. "I think Ben Johnson is very real."

That endorsement arrives with a comparison attached, and it is not a flattering one for the last guy. Ben Johnson's presence, Jake Johnson said, "makes me comedically look back at the Eberflus era."

He was skeptical from the announcement forward. When the Bears named Matt Eberflus, the reaction in Jake Johnson's head was simple: "I don't know who he is." Watching him on Hard Knocks did not fix anything. What bothered him most was the quarterback development picture. Caleb Williams was sitting with a head coach who, in Jake Johnson's telling, mostly nodded along. "I mean, look, that's a defense, right?" he said. "Maybe we should get somebody else talking to Caleb."

Ben Johnson is a different species. Jake Johnson called him "seemingly the right sort of lunatic," which in Chicago reads as a compliment, and pointed to what the Bears did to Green Bay as evidence. "What he did to LaFleur, I've never seen anything like that," he said. "To the point where as a Bears fan, I felt a little bad. For the Packers head coach."

Then came the best analogy of the segment. Jake Johnson compared the postgame handshake to a nature documentary. "You watch like in the animal kingdom where you're watching like a lion eat something," he said. "You're like, I know everybody's got to eat. You could be a little nicer. You don't have to toy with it."

That is the part that lands. The complaint is not that the coach won. It is that he enjoyed it too visibly. Which, again, is the point.

"Coming from the world of Ditka and the Bears, I think Ben Johnson is such a Bears guy and he's such a 2026 Bear that it feels like, oh, this was meant to be the Bears for this run," Jake Johnson said. "He is a maniac. He's fun."

The show then rolled the receipt: a minicamp press conference from early June where a reporter left a phone on the podium without silencing it. Ben Johnson was mid-answer, praising the offseason work. "I'm really pleased with the teaching progression," he said. "We're all on the same page. We're speaking the same language and that's always a good starting point."

Then the phone rang. "Oh my," Johnson said. A beat later, still annoyed: "Somebody want to take their phone so I'm not interrupted again. Thanks."

Jake Johnson nearly came out of his chair. "I got so fired up," he said, before catching himself on the swear he almost let fly. "Everybody makes a mistake. Turn your phone off. One job, and it went off."

The desk ran with it from there, imagining the caller on the other end. An 11-year-old, maybe, checking in on a parent at work. "Can you pick up Doritos?"

The verdict was swift: no free wiener circle for that kid.