With just a week remaining until the NFL draft, the Chicago Bears have become increasingly eager to attack their next opportunity at improvement. They own seven selections in the draft, including four in the top 75, and are confident they can make significant strides in upgrading their roster.
In the meantime, new coach Ben Johnson and his staff are continuing through Phase I of their offseason program at Halas Hall, working to set expectations for players and establish the vision for how they want to play across all three phases. The Bears held availability with all their assistant coaches Thursday afternoon in Lake Forest, a lengthy session that provided valuable insight into the early stages of Johnson’s coaching tenure.
New receivers coach and assistant head coach Antwaan Randle El was among the headliners, speaking glowingly of his homecoming, returning to Chicago to coach for the franchise he grew up rooting for.
Here are six significant observations from Thursday’s session.
1. Randle El finally returns home.
The first time Randle El walked into Halas Hall as a coach, he couldn’t help but feel the emotions.
“I had to try not to because I wanted to get focused and locked in,” Randle El said. “But it just catches up with you. It was just, not weird, but it was like, ah, man, this is really happening. Like, this is it.”
This is it.
The Chicago Bears. Halas Hall. Randle El grew up revering the Bears in 1985. He was 6 years old during the run to Super Bowl XX. Those were some of his earliest football memories, watching “The Super Bowl Shuffle” and playing as receiver Willie Gault in Tecmo Bowl.
The Riverdale native was a three-sport standout at Thornton High School in the south suburbs during the 1990s. He went on to star at Indiana before becoming the first receiver to throw a touchdown pass in a Super Bowl during the Steelers’ win in Super Bowl XL. He nearly signed with the Bears as a free agent the following offseason in 2006 before Washington came in with a stronger offer.
Nearly two decades after almost becoming a Bear, Randle El is finally home. He was one of the first hires Johnson made after becoming head coach. The two worked together in Detroit with Randle El coaching wide receivers. He will again coach the receivers in Chicago, but he also added assistant head coach to his title.
Randle El’s parents still live in the south suburbs. He has two grandmothers, one who is 96 and another who is 85, still living in the area. For Randle El, it feels like this was meant to be.
He allowed himself a moment, just a moment, to be sentimental about it when he first put on his Bears team apparel and walked into Halas Hall in Lake Forest.
“(Then) I had to shut it off and get focused because, like I said, we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Randle El said.
2. Randle El seems borderline giddy to work with his top two receivers.
Heading into the 2024 draft, with a crop of receiver prospects as strong at the top as it had been in years, Randle El fully appreciated the talents of Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison Jr. and LSU’s Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr. But he had Washington’s Rome Odunze at the top of his list, hopeful the Detroit Lions could figure out some way to land Odunze.
So, yeah, imagine his disappointment when the Bears nabbed Odunze with the No. 9 pick.
“It didn’t work out,” Randle El said Thursday. “But I’m glad he’s here. Because, hey, here we are.”
Randle El admires Odunze’s fluidity at his size and sees an opportunity for him to have a major impact this season. He also let out a telling laugh Thursday the first time he began talking about DJ Moore, an expression of optimism about Moore’s potential within this offense.
“We can get him the ball in a lot of different ways,” Randle El said, his eyes widening. “I see him (being) used in a lot of ways.
“A lot of times you see him catching these screens. But he can run routes. He can move inside and do different things too. I am excited about that.”
Moore has 7,531 career receiving yards and 35 touchdowns and should be a force for Johnson thanks to his versatility and experience. Still, Randle El noted, Moore is entering season eight in the NFL and has still yet to play in a playoff game or on a team that notched more than seven wins. So his ears and his mind remain open.
“DJ hasn’t won yet,” Randle El said. “He hasn’t won consistently. Hasn’t been in the playoffs and those types of things. So he still needs to get ready for that.
“It’s a mindset that I have been in as a player. And as a coach. Now it’s like, ‘Man, we’ve got to get you to that point.’ And he’s hungry for that. So I can just feed into that and continue to build him up.”
3. The spring bonding experience with Caleb Williams is well underway.
There is no more important relationship inside Halas Hall right now than the one between Williams and Johnson, with the latter looking to pour offensive knowledge into the former as fast as possible. But Johnson will need help nurturing Williams and, at various times and in various manners, he will look to offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, passing game coordinator Press Taylor and quarterbacks coach J.T. Barrett to facilitate the process.
Barrett noted Thursday what he believes will be the most important piece of this spring in his building process with Williams.
“Time together,” Barrett said. “It’s just time. I can tell already that he cares. He loves ball. And when you’ve got that, we’ve got somewhere to go.”
Getting there, though, will be a long and demanding process. And for a hungry learner like Williams, one of the challenges for the coaching staff will be to keep their young quarterback from wanting to devour the entire buffet of knowledge in one sitting.
“You work very closely with him on his day-by-day approach,” Barrett said. “There will be certain times where he may feel like he’s drinking from a fire hydrant as far as the information coming at him. But day by day, he has to be locked in on what the focus area is for today and stay honed in on that. That’s all going to be a process.”
Added Taylor: “It’s been a big thing with us of giving (information) to Caleb in bite-sized pieces. With almost every quarterback, they want the whole thing right now. It’s ‘explain to me this and this and this and this.’ But I think collectively, we’ve done a great job of setting the vision that there’s a progression to all of this and we will get there when we get there.”
4. Eric Bieniemy is excited to embrace a rookie running back, whoever that may be.
The Bears have four running backs on the roster: D’Andre Swift, Roschon Johnson, Travis Homer and Ian Wheeler. Homer, primarily a special teams player, has six carries in two years with the Bears. Wheeler is coming off a torn ACL and has never played a regular-season snap of NFL football.
That leaves Swift and Johnson as the top candidates to see touches out of the backfield. That’s why there’s so much speculation around the Bears drafting a running back next week. At a position that tends to churn through injuries over the course of a season, two options aren’t enough.
Whether the Bears select someone with the No. 10 pick (perhaps Ashton Jeanty, if he’s still available) or later in the draft, it feels likely that they will wind up with a new running back on the roster.
Even if it’s not Jeanty in the first round, this year’s draft is considered deep at the position. There are other options, such as North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton and Ohio State’s TreVeyon Henderson.
However the Bears attack it, new running backs coach Bieniemy will be excited to embrace a rookie.
“There’s a number of guys that are coming out and my thing is, the guys up top (in the front office) and the head coach are going to make the best decision for our organization,” Bieniemy said. “That’s the only thing that matters. If we decide to draft one, you know what, we’re going to bring him into the building, we’re going to put our arms around him and we’re going to treat him just like he’s one of the rest of the guys, whether he’s drafted or he’s a street free agent.”
Before he won two Super Bowls as the Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator, Bieniemy coached some great running backs during his years as an assistant. The list includes Adrian Peterson, Maurice Jones-Drew, Jamaal Charles and Kareem Hunt.
5. Dennis Allen wants Kyler Gordon on the field at all times.
Since the day he arrived as the new defensive coordinator in Chicago, Allen said he has a plan for the cornerback. Earlier this week, general manager Ryan Poles locked up Gordon with a three-year contract extension worth $40 million. Poles wouldn’t have done that if the new coaching staff wasn’t excited about Gordon’s potential fit in the system.
For Allen, that doesn’t necessarily mean locking in Gordon as the nickel corner.
“I’ve talked to him about this: Where do we find that second position for him where it’s not just he’s a nickel only?” Allen said Thursday. “Does he go outside and compete at outside corner? Does he compete some at safety? I’ve told him that he needs to be learning both of those spots.”
Last year in former coach Matt Eberflus’ defense, Gordon played primarily at the nickel spot, lining up opposite the slot receiver. When the Bears wanted a bigger lineup on the field with a third linebacker, Gordon was typically the defensive back who came off the field. As such, Gordon played only about 68% of defensive snaps, while other top defensive backs such as Jaylon Johnson and Kevin Byard were playing close to 100%.
As a rookie in 2022, Gordon split time between outside corner and nickel. He turned his focus solely to the nickel in 2023 and 2024. Allen wants to find a way to keep Gordon on the field at all times.
“We’ve had guys that have had the flexibility to play a lot of different positions,” Allen said. “I think that’s important in today’s football, where you’re not just locked into one thing. Being able to be multiple and do a lot of different things, so that’s something that I think he can do.”
Allen said the Bears won’t know what the right answer is in terms of positional fits until they can see Gordon at various spots on the practice field. This will be one of Allen’s experiments as the Bears head into OTAs and minicamp this spring.
6. Johnson has his coaching staff’s attention.
That much was clear while listening to Bears assistants Thursday, particularly as they spoke of Johnson’s attention to detail and his demand for excellence daily from everyone around him.
“You understand what that is coming in,” said Barrett, who coached the past three seasons with Johnson in Detroit. “And so you then take that same approach to the way you coach your position group.”
Doyle, meanwhile, also has taken note of Johnson’s repeated insistence that discomfort and strain are a part of chasing excellence.
“That’s an attitude. And that’s a standard,” Doyle said. “The behavior you walk by becomes the standard that you accept. Either you’re coaching it or you’re allowing it to happen. And so every thing we are doing on a daily basis has to be held to that standard. That requires a high level of communication from the very top of Ben explaining his vision to us and then us as coaches holding our players and fellow coaches to that standard.”
There’s an undeniable edge to Johnson, Doyle said. And Taylor acknowledged that edge is energizing.
“There is this push to be cutting edge,” Taylor said, “to be in front, to push the envelope. We want to not only challenge ourselves but our players as well. And just because something worked (previously) doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. So let’s keep searching for the best way to do things that get the most of of everybody.”
