Ben Johnson is not talking about a standard autumn goal. He wants the Chicago Bears to build the highest-scoring offense ever, and he says that means catching the 2013 Denver Broncos and their 37.9 points per game.
That is the standard Johnson put on the table during training camp on Aug. 4, when the new head coach said the Bears should aim beyond what 31 other teams usually promise in July and August. He said he wants shutouts, blowouts and a target bigger than the Super Bowl line most clubs sell to their players.
Johnson knows exactly how steep the climb is. The Broncos’ 2013 attack remains the benchmark because it did something no offense has topped since: it averaged 37.9 points per game across a full season. Johnson said he wants to surpass that number, not just approach it, and then keep going. He also pointed to the 2003-2004 New England Patriots winning 21 straight games as another marker, saying he wants the Bears to do what that team did.
The timing matters because Johnson is not speaking from a distance. The Athletic shadowed him for a 14-hour training camp day at Halas Hall, and shortly before 5 a.m. on Aug. 4 he was already at the Chicago Bears offices in Lake Forest, Ill. He did 12 warm-up push-ups before heading downstairs, a small detail that fits the way he has set the tone: fast, demanding and unapologetically ambitious.
But the same day he talked about historic scoring, Johnson also planned two live periods in practice and said the Bears would be calling mostly runs during those stretches. That is the friction inside the plan. A coach who says he wants the most explosive offense ever is also leaning into contact, repetition and the ground game while camp is still underway. It is not a contradiction so much as a reminder that the route to big numbers usually starts with work that looks ordinary to everyone else.
Johnson’s own pace is part of that picture. He usually gets five hours of sleep this time of year, says he can function with four once games begin and wakes up well before his 4:30 alarm. He also told players there has never been an undefeated season since teams have been playing more than 14 regular-season games, then pushed the point further: the moon is not the finish line. For him, it is the Super Bowl, with something even higher beyond it.
That is the real test in Chicago now. Johnson has given the Bears a measurable target, one that can be checked every Sunday against history and every week against the scoreboard. The next step is not another speech. It is whether the offense can make the jump from a camp message to NFL scores that start to look like a record chase.
