Ben Johnson gets no respect in Coach of the Year voting. Here's why

Bears fans who fell in love with Ben Johnson this season and rightfully embraced him as the best head coach at Halas Hall since Mike Ditka just received a dose of reality — Ben Johnson did not make a lot of friends around the NFL this season. 

That Johnson did not win the NFL Coach of the Year Award was not a big surprise — both the Patriots’ Mike Vrabel and the Seahawks’ Mike Macdonald are in the Super Bowl with teams that did not make the playoffs in 2024. 

The upset was that Johnson was a distant fourth with 145 points — behind Vrabel (302), the Jaguars’ Liam Coen (239) and Macdonald (191). In fact, after taking the Bears from 5-12 to 11-6 and the NFC North title in his first season in 2025, Johnson received just one first-place vote. Vrabel had 19, Coen 16 and Macdonald 8. Even the 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan, who finished fifth overall in the voting (140), had six first-place votes. 

And the only writer on the Associated Press poll to vote for Johnson was long-time Chicagoan Dan Pompei, who covered the Bears for many years with the Sun-Times and Tribune. So nationally, Johnson actually was shut out of first-place voting. 

A lot of Bears fans are livid at the lack of respect Johnson received after such an exhilarating season in Chicago. And as a fairly objective Chicago-based writer, I agree that Johnson’s culture-changing turnaround with the Bears was worthy of winning the award (and certainly getting more voting support than he did). The Bears were a mess last season — with a 10-game losing streak, the unprecedented in-season firing of not only offensive coordinator Shane Waldron but head coach Matt Eberflus. 

But even more than that, Johnson had a unique challenge in taking the Bears’ job — overcoming the chronic dysfunction at Halas Hall that has consumed many an authority figure over the years. (Matt Nagy is Exhibit A. In a feature on the former Bears coach for The Athletic in December, Pompei implied that part of Nagy’s downfall with the Bears was his inability to follow Nagy’s own “Be You” motto after the 2018 season.)

Though the true test of staying power awaits, Johnson did what others before him could not — he changed Halas Hall before it changed him. Even before he stepped foot in the building, Johnson’s availability compelled the Bears to break the bank and sign him to a contract worth a reported $13 million a year. The Bears tacitly made Johnson the leading authority on football matters at Halas Hall, with general manager Ryan Poles taking a noted step back publicly as the voice of the organization. And, as I wrote in this 1st-and-10 column in January, Johnson’s vulgar shot at the Packers after beating them in the playoffs (“Fuck the Packers. Fuck them.”) was a “culture shift” that went straight up to George McCaskey’s office. 

That’s an impact that outsiders are less privy to — or perhaps don’t care about. But the bigger factor in the coach of the year voting is that Ben Johnson’s style that endeared him to Bears fans, antagonized non-Bears fans. Bears fans love the “Fuck the Packers” rivalry that Johnson stoked, but can’t (or shouldn’t) ignore the reality that Johnson picked that fight with an unprovoked jab at his introductory press conference (“And to be quite Franke with you, I kind of enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a year.”). The juvenile post-game handshake incidents after all three Bears-Packers games absolutely stemmed from that statement. 

Johnson’s candor is appreciated by thirsty Bears fans (and media), but has a different impact for those on the outside looking in. “Some teams rest their starters. We don’t. We play football” was celebrated in Chicago, but came across as a knock against teams that coasted. 

And Johnson’s over-the-top post-game locker room celebrations — including taking his shirt off after an upset of the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field — make Bears fans want to run through a wall for the guy, but aren’t so well-received elsewhere. Nagy had “Club Dub” but was never the star of that show.

So while Johnson is the best thing since Ditka to Bears fans, he’s the worst thing since Ditka to much of the rest of the league. That’s good for the Bears, but there’s a small price to pay for that, and the coach of the year vote was part of that. 

I opined late in the season that Johnson will have to refine his edge in the future and stand by that. His approach in 2025 seems like a necessary take to revitalize the organization. With that mission accomplished and an offense on the rise, he can take it down a notch in 2026 — and not only win more games, but make more friends.  

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