During the quarterback meeting the night before the Chicago Bears hosted the Philadelphia Eagles on Sept. 29, backup QB Case Keenum probed coach Ben Johnson over a play he wasn't certain would work.
Keenum, the 38-year-old journeyman who was starting in place of the injured Caleb Williams, was keen on everything about the play from the route to the protection, and particularly how it was designed, but he had reservations.
"It was a play Ben was very high on, and I loved it too, but I had some questions about it," Keenum said. "I don't want to say he talked me into it [that] night, but he assured me that it would be a good play. And, golly, he called it at the perfect time."
With a fresh set of downs at Philadelphia's 41-yard line and 5:55 on the clock in the third quarter, the Bears got a different look after the ball was snapped than what they had anticipated.
That's when Johnson's virtuosity as a play designer appeared.
The play was designed to allow the primary receiver to change in a matter of seconds based on the coverage. As he took off from the slot, Kalif Raymond realized quickly that he had become the primary, and the ball was coming his way.
As Eagles defenders vacated the middle of the field to cover three intermediate routes, Keenum fired a pass into an opening over the middle, where he found Raymond wide-open. The catch-and-run opportunity ended with a 41-yard touchdown as the Bears went on to record a 27-7 rout.
Those real-time adjustments that Johnson builds into his play designs are something players have come to appreciate. It's what separates him as a playcaller. It's what makes this Bears offense so dangerous.
"The cool part about Ben is he doesn't design plays within the box," Raymond said. "He'll design it based off the voids. Because he's not putting that conceptualized box that everybody pulls from on film, he starts creating his own play within the defensive scheme that you're about to go against.
"So now he's picking at your voids and [the defense has] to adjust in game."
The way Johnson designs plays for his offense has built the Bears into one of the NFL's most explosive units as Chicago is off to a 5-2 start. It's a reputation he earned around the league with a scheme rooted in unorthodox designs, trick plays and options, which allows everyone -- yes, everyone -- on offense to get involved.
"One of the coolest things about Ben is that when he installs a play, like, every play is going to work, every play is going to be an explosive, it doesn't matter if it's a short-yardage run, it doesn't matter if it's a 50-yard bomb," Williams said. "When we get out there, we have full faith in each other as a team, from coaches to players. When you have that, when you have a head ball coach like that, it goes a long way throughout the building."
Johnson's expertise as a play designer didn't begin when he started calling offenses of his own. His journey can be traced back to his very beginnings in football in Asheville, North Carolina, where he honed his ingenuity as a preteen who designed his own plays while still learning the game. From those roots to the biggest stage in the sport, Johnson has kept tinkering like a mad scientist in a lab, aiming to push the limits of his players and his scheme's capabilities.
"I can't say the words we use in the offensive meeting room because I'll go viral," Raymond said with a laugh. "It's a borderline between he's got a little bit of genius, a little bit of crazy, a little bit of aggressiveness."
Ben Johnson, the preteen play designer
Gail Johnson, a teacher and busy mom of three, found herself inquisitively staring at the scraps of paper scattered across the floor of her sons' bedroom.
The tiny scribbles etched in pencil were a part of some code Gail had regularly come across as she tidied up around the bunk beds shared by her young sons Ben and Kyle. Letters "E, T" in succession with a row of circles beneath them, each one containing a number. "QB" was labeled "1," "FB" was "2" and "TB" was "3." There was a long arrow pointing from the circle situated furthest to the left that traced upward before it veered slightly to its right.
Gail encountered these diagrams so often that she didn't think twice about throwing them away as she made beds and tossed clothes in the hamper. Until one day when Ben, a fifth-grader, inquired about their whereabouts.
From that point, Gail started saving these drawings and asked her son to explain what they meant. These were football plays, Ben told his mother, who would respond by asking what a specific play was designed to do. As Ben detailed the intent behind the collection of numbers, letters, shapes and lines, Gail transcribed.
Twins Right Rip 138 backside skinny post
Gail smiled as she recognized her handwriting that deciphered the code on one particular drawing, many of which are still housed inside a green folder labeled "keep 'ems" in the family's ranch-style home in Asheville.
Caleb Williams on working with Ben Johnson: "When he installs a play, every play is going to work, every play is going to be an explosive. He takes into account what we like as players, what we do well, and puts all that together. When you have that and a head ball coach like that, it goes a long way throughout the building." Ben is one of a Kind 🔥
— Bears on Real (@BearsOnReal) October 30, 2026
"I knew then that his mind was working in that direction, that he was trying to be more creative with the plays that he was probably seeing himself run with his friends," Gail said. "He thought there's more out there, and [he] was going to start fiddling around with it."
In those days, Sundays were spent gathered around the television watching the San Francisco 49ers dominate the 1990s. The Niners were Don Johnson's favorite team. As a former college offensive coordinator and later a high school football coach, he appreciated San Francisco's West Coast offense and thought quarterback Joe Montana was "exceptional" for the way he operated within the scheme.
So did Ben, who would jump around the living room and try to throw a spiral with a football that barely fit in his hands while emulating his favorite quarterback.
On game days, Ben would sit next to his father and ask questions about what he saw unfolding on the screen. He wanted to know why a penalty was called and the reason why certain plays worked and others failed. There was a depth to the questions Ben asked at 10 and 11 years old that Don hadn't heard from the high school players he coached.
Ben's thirst for an understanding of the game he played from his youth through a walk-on career at the University of North Carolina grew as he began to sketch plays of his own. The lefty expanded his scribbles from scraps in pencil to colorful drawings in marker where the details jumped out immediately to his father. A misdirection play. An angled route where the quarterback throws to the split end, resulting in a touchdown. A play being blocked up by seven players -- "which is unusual," Don notes -- as a pass was thrown away from the play-action and resulted in a receiver being wide-open for a 60-yard touchdown.
"He wanted to impress his dad, I believe, and he did that with some of the things he [drew]," Don Johnson said.
Ben sought feedback from his father on the plays he designed. He not only wanted to know if they were legal within the rules of the game, but more importantly, whether Don thought they'd work.
"I tried to tell him I thought he did a pretty good job, but it confused me to see some of the things that he wrote down there," Don said. "So I had to talk with him a little bit more about, here's what actually you could probably do, and he listened very closely. He wanted to do the right thing."
It was like doing homework for Ben, who would sit at the oval wooden table adjacent to the kitchen and let his mind go to work. He took his affinity for designing plays and furthering his knowledge of offensive football as seriously as he did his academics. By the time he finished high school, he had quarterbacked A.C. Reynolds to a state championship and ranked top-five in his class academically.
His out-of-the-box thinking and progressive view for pushing the limits on offense were honed after he graduated from UNC and rose from a graduate assistant at Boston College to a position coach in Miami to getting to call his own scheme for the Detroit Lions. His path as a play designer and caller can be traced back to these vintage mementos that spark the now head coach of the Bears to ask a question out loud as he reunites with the drawings he once slaved over some 30 years ago
"I hope there's 11 on the field on both teams," Ben said with a smile.
Johnson's ingenuity in action
The play known as "Stumblebum" was masterminded by Johnson in his final season as Detroit's OC. It featured quarterback Jared Goff faking a stumble as he dropped back while running back Jahmyr Gibbs dove to the turf. Meanwhile, everyone up front yelled "fumble."
It was one the Lions repped for weeks in practice before they traveled to Soldier Field for a late December 2024 meeting with the Bears. If executed properly, then-Lions wide receivers coach Antwaan Randle El knew this unconventional play could break a game open.
"You can't put anything past us in terms of what we put in," said Randle El, who is now Johnson's right-hand man as the receivers coach and assistant head coach for the Bears. "If it looks like it is a possibility to try and do it, we're going to try and do it."
The design of the ruse worked as it grabbed the eyes and attention of Chicago defenders and allowed tight end Sam LaPorta to slip wide-open downfield for a 21-yard touchdown reception. The celebration was so raucous on the Lions' sideline that Randle El couldn't hear whether Johnson had sent out the kicking unit or whether Detroit was going to cap off the touchdown with a 2-point conversion. (They went for the extra point.)
The celebration was what caught the eye of Bears general manager Ryan Poles, whose team now trailed by 20 points early in the third quarter. Weeks ahead of when he would lead Chicago's head coaching search after the Bears fired Matt Eberflus in Nov. 2024, Poles saw Johnson making the type of statement that catapulted him to the top of Poles' list, which included 16 other candidates who interviewed for the job.
"There's a couple playcallers in the league during my time doing this that going against them, I felt helpless," Poles said. "And it's like, why is everybody open? How do we stop this? It's Ben and it's Kyle Shanahan. Those are the two guys that I've watched that just puts you in a really bad mood watching the game and going against them."
Poles felt vexed by what he witnessed Johnson's offense do to the Bears. At the same time, he had "a little grin" on his face seeing the genius of Johnson's play design in action, knowing what it could do for his team.
"If he's got you on the ropes, he wants to put your lights out," Poles said. "You could feel that mentality come out in his playcalling."
His creativity shines in moments when Johnson leans on the unexpected to catch his opponent off guard.
During Chicago's win over the Green Bay Packers in the playoffs, Johnson sent offensive lineman Theo Benedet on a post route as the Bears began their second-half comeback. The 6-foot-7, 304-pound tackle clocked over 16 miles per hour as he ran downfield, which forced the Packers to account for something they weren't expecting.
"The thing with him is he installs [plays] completely earnestly as if it's just a regular outside zone play," Benedet said. "So you're almost sitting there trying not to laugh and take it serious because you know it is to him."
Johnson's play designs that translate into playcalls don't have a 100% hit rate. Sometimes it's the ones that don't work that hold a lasting impact. In the Bears' 30-24 win over the Patriots in Week 7, the offense was flagged for an illegal handoff when Caleb Williams took a snap and handed the ball forward to left guard Joe Thuney, whose 4-yard run deep in New England's red zone was negated.
The ball needed to be handed backward for the play to be legal, and the way the Bears had run it in practice led to touchdowns. Still, Johnson was anything but discouraged as he went back to the drawing board, readying himself for the next opportunity to put his creativity to the test.
"It's one of those things, shooters shoot," Johnson said. "We shot, we missed. So, keep it moving."