Ben Johnson’s Bears sit atop the NFC. How good are they? How high can they climb? — Pick Six
The sight of Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson pulling off his shirt and gyrating in a jubilant postgame locker room, surrounded by delirious players, stands alone as the No. 1 visual from this 2025 NFL season.
How fun that must have been for an organization that in recent years has watched from afar while rival NFC North coaches Kevin O’Connell and Dan Campbell exulted with their players almost weekly. What would the Bears have given to have one of those coaches? They wouldn’t trade their guy now.
“It was awesome,” a former head coach who would never take off his shirt in the locker room said. “You gotta be yourself. It’s perfect for them because they are high energy right now, and they are believing.”
Should we join the Bears in that belief?
The Pick Six column for Week 13 salutes the current No. 1 seed in the NFC, a 9-3 Bears team that has surpassed its preseason Vegas win total (8.5) with five games to play.
Saluting is not anointing, but there’s no need to rush. Instead of dismissing the Bears as true contenders, which is easily done right now, we should consider their trajectory under Johnson. Who knows how much better this team can become by season’s end?
The full Pick Six menu this week:
• Bears’ growth and trajectory
• Who’s invisible in Panthers’ win
• Eagles’ two-point debate ridiculous
• Carroll might need Hail Mary
• Lem Barney is a living legend
• Two-minute drill: ‘Fire Tomlin’
1. The Bears are overachieving in the win column, and it’s great for their development. Underneath, vital signs are encouraging.
Three positive long-term indicators are attributable directly to Johnson.
• Johnson has Williams’ long-term growth in mind: If Johnson wanted to maximize second-year quarterback Caleb Williams’ production in the short term, he could lean into college concepts, as so many play callers are lauded for doing.
Instead, Johnson has cut the Bears’ percentage of run-pass options into the low single digits while ramping up play-action and pre-snap motion.
Johnson has brought the system he ran in Detroit to Chicago with its wide-zone running game and well-sequenced play-action. He has implemented a structure that is forcing Williams to learn the pro game without robbing the quarterback of his flair for improvisation. There are no guarantees it will work, but there are positive signs.
“The No. 1 thing that Ben Johnson is doing with Caleb is teaching him how to play quarterback,” a veteran play caller said. “He is not doing anything different with his throwing motion or anything like that. What is the down and distance? If it’s second-and-3, we don’t need to throw the fade here.”
Williams still leads the league in average time to throw (3.08 seconds), but he’s playing smarter situationally.
Last season, he took 22 sacks on 78 plays when holding the ball longer than 3.5 seconds and up to 5 seconds. He has taken four sacks on 54 such plays this season. (When holding the ball longer than five seconds, he has a similar sack rate to 2024, with an uptick in incomplete passes.)
These are positive tradeoffs and a leading reason the Bears rank 10th in offensive EPA per play, up from 26th last season.
• Johnson already has a strong ground game. Some offensive coaches fall in love with the pass. Johnson’s Bears rushed for 281 yards against Philadelphia, most against a Vic Fangio-coordinated defense in 248 total games since Week 7 of 2005.
“Ben threw the ball in the first quarter, and then he said, ‘Am I nuts throwing in the wind with Caleb Williams when I can just run the ball with two backs?’” a coach from another team said. “He adjusted, and that was the impressive part. Vic wants to sit in the two-high shell and roll guys down late. Ben ran in the A-gaps a lot, so it was quick hitting, and the safeties can’t help on the inside fits.”
It wasn’t a fluke. Chicago ranks among the NFL’s top five in rushing yards, explosive rushing rate, rushing success rate and rate of running back rushes from under center. The identity is clear.
The Bears ranked outside the top 20 in all those categories last season. Their rushing success rate (percentage of rushes that increase their chances for scoring, as determined by EPA) would be the best for a Chicago team since at least 2000, per TruMedia.
Upgrading the offensive line with expensive additions explains some of the improvement.
• Johnson brings welcome personality to Chicago: There’s a competitive arrogance to Johnson that works for him because it’s clear he knows what he is doing, and it’s not forced. No Bears coach since Mike Ditka has projected anything quite like it. Johnson has the Bears looking like a team that makes its breaks instead of living with them.
All that said, questions remain.
The defense has fallen from 12th last season to 23rd this season in EPA per play. Three years of building the defensive personnel for former coach Matt Eberflus might not be ideal for new coordinator Dennis Allen, who plays different fronts and asks more from linebackers in coverage.
All signs point to the Bears’ record being better than the team itself. Chicago’s point differential (+6) is third-worst among 376 teams with nine victories in their first 12 games, per Pro Football Reference. The Bears are tied for third in the NFL win rate (.750) but only 16th in average point margin. Luck plays some role in the Bears going 4-1 in games decided by three or fewer points (their record was 1-5 in such games last season).
The Bears rank lower when we adjust their point margin to the opponent. Chicago’s plus-9 margin against Philadelphia was the second-best by any team against the Eagles this season, but that was not the norm. If we take the Bears’ point margin rank against every team they have faced this season, the average would be 7.1. That is tied with Miami for 22nd in the league, well behind Green Bay (4.8, which is seventh — a lower number is better) and Detroit (5.4, which is 10th).
Winning at an inflated clip has shielded the team from incessant week-to-week discussion over Williams’ development, which benefits all involved, especially after so much was said and written about Williams coming into the season.
Every surplus victory works against Chicago becoming one of the harshest incubators in the league.
2. Anyone seen Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper? Didn’t think so
It’s been a long time since Tepper was in the news for throwing a drink, overreaching behind the scenes, firing coaches quickly or doing anything else to make bad situations worse.
In a development most would consider related, Carolina has a winning record (7-6) through 13 games for the first time since 2017, the season before Tepper purchased the team.
Ownership matters, and while some who have worked in Carolina say they liked Tepper as a person, the way he ran the team created distractions. That has not been the case since Tepper put a new front office in place before last season. Players and coaches can improve. So can owners.
“We went from seeing this guy five or six times the last few years during the season — tipping cups, doing whatever — to not seeing him at all,” an exec from another team said. “It is a huge improvement. He’s done a great job and deserves credit for it.”
The Panthers, 31-28 upset winners over the previously 9-2 Rams in Week 13, can finish with a winning record for the first time since they were 11-5 in that final season before Tepper arrived. They’ll need to win at least twice more from a remaining schedule featuring New Orleans (road), Tampa Bay (home), Seattle (home) and Tampa Bay (road).
With victories over Dallas, Green Bay and now Los Angeles, Carolina has beaten three teams that currently have winning records. The team had previously won once with Bryce Young at quarterback when facing teams that finished with winning records. Paradoxically, the team has also lost to Arizona and New Orleans.
“Owners can improve,” an exec from another team said. “I’m sure the DeBartolos weren’t great right away when they took over the 49ers (in the late 1970s). Did (Chiefs owner) Clark Hunt get better when he gave all the power to Andy Reid? Sometimes, they get distracted by their other businesses.”
This game against the Rams should excite Carolina for two main reasons.
The Panthers won in the vision of their head coach, Dave Canales, a Carroll disciple. They had 40 rushes (35 by running backs), did not pass much (20 attempts), made explosive plays through the air (touchdowns of 35, 33 and 43 yards) and scored on defense.
Young’s ability to complete passes in clutch situations, partly because he was well-protected against a strong Rams pass rush, was another positive marker. Young won third down, completing 6 of 8 passes for 86 yards and a touchdown in those situations. His third-down passer rating (149.0) was the best of his career.
Jalen Coker’s return from injury was an under-the-radar key for a team that traded Adam Thielen with an eye toward the future. Coker scored a 33-yard touchdown on fourth-and-3 in the third quarter. He also caught a 10-yard pass for a first down on third-and-5 with 2:17 to play, enabling Carolina to run out the clock.
“Canales has had two big wins, one against Green Bay, which was unbelievable, and then this one, which was huge,” another exec said.
3. Feeling super strongly about the Eagles’ decision to go for two when trailing by nine is a tell (just ask Greg Olsen).
The Eagles’ decision to try a two-point conversion after pulling within 24-15 against Chicago with 3:10 remaining incited a debate that revealed more about the debaters than it revealed about the decision itself.
Mathematical models generally advocate going for two when trailing by nine late in regulation because the trailing team needs a successful two-point try to win at some point, and some feel there’s an advantage in finding out sooner than later if the try is successful.
Others think kicking the higher-percentage extra point when trailing by nine makes more sense, because a failed two-point try basically ends the game, robbing the trailing team of energy or momentum.
We should not embrace either argument too tightly. The mathematical models suggest an edge so slight that factors specific to a particular game could easily override the recommendation.
“I’ve been asked why I defend these strategies and to just let it go,” Olsen wrote on X as part of an extended exchange on the Eagles’ decision. “The answer is I take great responsibility to share the modern game and the way it’s being played.”
As much as we might appreciate Olsen’s enthusiasm for the game, the tight end-turned-broadcaster dug in so deeply on the Eagles’ decision that he saw himself as a crusader for an emerging era of NFL enlightenment.
But you’re so overconfident in a strategy that has literally never produced a win in NFL history.
No team has ever gone 8+7 or 8+8 to win a game after down 15.
Teams who go for 2 after the first TD in the last 12:00 are 1-26, and the lone winner (2020 DAL) disproves your theory… https://t.co/CCvHebIrF3
— Scott Kacsmar (@ScottKacsmar) November 30, 2025
In the Eagles’ case, windy conditions made kicking extra points tougher. During pregame warmups, Eagles kicker Jake Elliott missed multiple tries heading toward the north end zone, which is where he would have been attempting the PAT if Nick Sirianni had made a different choice. Elliott missed his only PAT of the day (heading in the other direction).
Any coach should take into consideration the diminished odds of making a PAT on a windy day. Such variables change the calculus. A team that lost its kicker to injury obviously would reconsider as well. Sirianni predictably did not reference a lack of confidence in his kicker when explaining his thinking Sunday. He said he prefers going for two when trailing by nine for the reasons espoused by the mathematical models.
“Why can’t there just be differences of opinions?” a veteran NFL coach said. “One strategy is not the only strategy.”
With onside-kick recovery rates plummeting for teams trailing in the final five minutes — from 15 percent (2000-13) to 9.8 percent (2014-21) to 6.1 percent (since 2022) as rules have evolved — engaging in bare-knuckle brawls over the Eagles’ decision is like debating what sunscreen to wear on the sun. You’re cooked regardless.
Philly became the 59th team since 2000 to score a touchdown to pull within exactly nine points with between 5:00 and 3:00 remaining in the fourth quarter, per TruMedia. Those teams are 1-53 when attempting extra points and 1-3 when trying two-point conversions.
When Dallas beat Atlanta in 2020, the Cowboys failed on a two-point try with 4:57 remaining while down nine. They got the ball back at 2:57, scored another touchdown at 1:49, kicked the extra point and then recovered an onside kick at 1:15 to set up the winning field goal drive.
Did the Cowboys follow a repeatable model? There is no easy way out of the predicament Philadelphia faced.
“As you gather more info, teams develop and practice different strategies,” the coach added. “We have seen teams win the coin toss and take the ball. We have seen it swing the other way. Same thing with overtime kickoffs. Why do we have to say anyone who doesn’t do one strategy is dumb? It’s ridiculous.”
4. Two reports on Chip Kelly confirm Pete Carroll is exerting power during the season that he did not possess before it.
The firing of Chip Kelly as the Raiders’ offensive coordinator precipitated eyebrow-raising reports from NFL Network insiders Tom Pelissero and Ian Rapoport.
Prepare to read between the lines.
Pelissero, speaking on the Rich Eisen Show, said Kelly botched play calls and even called plays not in the game plan.
Rapoport, following up on NFL.com, said Carroll forced Kelly to call a version of Carroll’s Seattle offense.
This has all the hallmarks of organizational dysfunction.
When Carroll took the Seattle job in 2010, he had leverage to hire his own staff without interference.
When Carroll took the Las Vegas job in 2025, he was desperate for an NFL return. Carroll was able to hire his sons, but when he did not hire coordinators from his past, such as Darrell Bevell and Gus Bradley, it showed that others influenced the decisions.
Carroll surely respects Kelly and defensive coordinator Patrick Graham, but he had no history with either. In a league where time is of the essence, especially for a 74-year-old head coach, why would Carroll sign up for molding veteran coaches to the methods he has spent five decades honing?
“When you agree to the staff that you agree to and the wins do not come, that does not become a bargaining chip to get it the way you want,” an exec from another team said.
The defense has improved, but Graham, like Kelly, is calling plays the way Carroll would call them. That includes playing base defense a majority of the time (former Seahawks safety Jamal Adams is listed as a linebacker for the Raiders, accounting for more than half of the increase in this area), a huge shift from what Graham did as defensive play caller with the Giants, Dolphins and 2024 Raiders. Graham is playing more single-high safety defense and less man coverage, especially on third down. He’s playing more Cover 3 and is blitzing less frequently.
The Raiders lost 27-10 to the Chargers in Los Angeles on Sunday, their fifth loss this season by 17 or more points, tied with the Titans for most in the league. The Athletic‘s projection model gives them a 19 percent chance at picking first in the 2026 draft, second behind Tennessee (56 percent).
Carroll might try to use this lost Raiders season to argue he needs full control over staff hiring to implement his program (he previously fired special teams coach Tom McMahon). Owner Mark Davis, minority owner Tom Brady and any other stakeholders will have to decide whether that beats moving in another direction entirely. It could be a tough sell.
“The idea was, Pete was going to come in and make them a playoff team with a veteran quarterback,” the exec added. “It will now be up to the GM to go through a head-coaching search, in my opinion.”
5. Lem Barney, who is still very much alive, sang backup vocals for Marvin Gaye when he wasn’t picking off passes for the Detroit Lions.
Reports over the weekend that Barney, who turned 80 in September, had died were erroneous. Let’s appreciate the former Lions cornerback while he’s alive, shall we?
Barney’s greatness as a player shone through several years ago during a conversation with Jerry Glanville, who was a defensive assistant and special teams coach with Detroit from 1974 to ’76, and who coached another great corner, Deion Sanders, later in Atlanta.
“(Dick) ‘Night Train’ Lane, Lem Barney and Deion Sanders did something nobody does in football,” Glanville said. “They would let the receiver get open intentionally.”
The strategy was to bait quarterbacks into throwing, then make up ground in coverage to pick off passes. Barney was also an expert at reading quarterbacks.
“We are playing the Vikings, and his guy is running through the post, and Fran Tarkenton sees what I see, lets it go and Lem Barney picks it off,” Glanville said.
The video above is cued to this game-saving play late in the Lions’ 1974 victory over Minnesota.
“Nobody else could make that interception in the last 10 seconds the way Barney did,” Tarkenton said at the time. “They came with only a three-man rush. I was amazed to see (John) Holland running open into the end zone. Barney just peeled off (John) Gilliam. If he chased Gilliam another step or two, we would have had a touchdown. He’s one of those who looks at the quarterback’s eyes.”
Sanders could do that as well.
“When I got Deion, he let the guy get away from him too far, I thought,” Glanville said. “Both he and Lem said the same thing to me. ‘If I don’t let them get open, I won’t get any work.’ Who invented that? Night Train Lane.”
All three were 6 feet or taller and in the 190- 200-pound range. They combined to pick off 177 passes and were dynamic returners as well, especially Sanders and Barney.
“Lem Barney had all the athletic ability of Deion Sanders, but Lem Barney was different mentally,” Glanville said. “He told me one time … ‘If my mother (runs a route) in front of me, I will break her back before I let her catch the ball.’”
Barney was also known for sportsmanship, tackling players low instead of head-hunting, and helping up opponents after plays. His versatility included taking over punting duties when the regular punter was injured and serving as the regular punter’s personal protector, which facilitated fake punts.
“We would snap it to him and run the sweep,” Glanville said. “If I did that with Deion and he got hurt, I’d be fired. But if they had the ball in their hands, you couldn’t tag them in a phone booth, let alone tackle them.”
Glanville has been known to embellish, but as the table above shows, the trio of Sanders, Barney and Lane rank among the NFL’s top seven in yards per interception return among the 39 players with at least 50 interceptions, per Pro Football Reference. These were game-breakers.
Barney, who played his entire career before rule changes opened up the field for offenses in 1978, scored seven times on interception returns, twice on punt returns, once on a kickoff return and once on a blocked field goal return. He also ran for a first down on a fake punt that was not authorized by the coaching staff.
Barney also famously befriended Gaye in 1968, joining teammate Mel Farr in singing backup vocals on the legendary soul singer’s acclaimed 1971 album, “What’s Going On.”
Was Barney serious when he pushed for Gaye to get a tryout with the Lions in the early ’70s?
“Marvin’s a frustrated athlete,” Barney said then. “It’s a normal tendency. All entertainers and actors are frustrated athletes, and all athletes are frustrated entertainers and actors.”
6. Two-minute drill: Fire Mike Tomlin? Here we go again
Steelers fans picked up the “Fire Tomlin” chant during Pittsburgh’s 26-7 home defeat against Buffalo, a game featuring 10 first downs and 166 total yards for the home team.
It’s going to be a fascinating finish to the season for successful long-term coaches facing long Super Bowl droughts (Tomlin in Pittsburgh, John Harbaugh in Baltimore) or having never gotten there (Sean McDermott in Buffalo).
Harbaugh and McDermott belong in different categories because they’ve failed to reach Super Bowls while having MVP quarterbacks in their primes. How will ownership feel if their teams fail to make deep runs with Kansas City suffering through a down season?
Tomlin has been manufacturing decent regular seasons without top quarterback play.
As the table below shows, only Don Shula lasted longer than Tomlin and Harbaugh without winning another title among the 14 coaches who have spent 200-plus games and won a Super Bowl with one team. Shula and Tomlin each made additional Super Bowl appearances without winning it all, but both lasted more than a decade longer after those games as well.
The Aaron Rodgers experiment was always a one-year bet for the Steelers, and a long shot.
Rodgers entered the Buffalo game with a broken left wrist. He emerged from it looking like he’d fought an actual Buffalo — nose battered, blood streaming down his face. His production has tanked in recent weeks.
If he can stay on the field, Rodgers has two games against Baltimore and one apiece against Miami, Detroit and Cleveland to lead a playoff push. Those odds are getting longer.
• Chiefs diagnosis: Kansas City’s latest defeat, 31-28 at Dallas, dropped the Chiefs to 1-6 in games decided by eight or fewer points. It also recalled the lead item of our Pick Six column from last week, in which we asked whether the team would be better off missing the playoffs if it invited important changes.
While we’ve spent ample time evaluating structural issues on offense, a quote from an NFL executive last week came to mind after the defeat in Dallas.
“At the end of the day, I think you will see (a lack of pass rush) come back to bite them,” the exec said.
A drop in defensive performance explains most of the Chiefs’ regression from 11-0 in one-score games last season to 1-6 in them so far in 2025. The table below shows smaller declines in offensive performance.
• Seattle’s defense: I’m not sure how serious NFL Network analyst and former coach Steve Mariucci was when he predicted Max Brosmer would set the single-game rookie record for passing yards in his debut at Seattle, but that did not happen during a 26-0 Seahawks victory.
Steve Mariucci predicts that @Vikings QB Max Brosmer will throw for 485 yards today 😳 pic.twitter.com/h11rimHcRq
— NFL Network (@nflnetwork) November 30, 2025
Seattle finished Sunday’s game with +33.3 defensive EPA, fourth-best for the Seahawks in 444 total games since 2000, per TruMedia. It was the Seahawks’ best figure since a 58-0 victory over Arizona in 2012 (+34.0).
Seattle owed nearly one-third of that defensive EPA total (+10.1) to linebacker Ernest Jones’ pick six off Brosmer, whose underhanded desperation heave on fourth-and-1 while in field-goal range might have been the worst play by a quarterback all season.
• Rams mystery: Coach Sean McVay was about as upbeat as he could be following the Rams’ surprising defeat at Carolina as a 10-point favorite. Before that game, all signs pointed toward McVay having the best overall team of his tenure, at least in the regular season.
That still might be the case, unless this game against Carolina suggests the team ultimately cannot hide concerns at cornerback.
Carolina was the team playing without its No. 1 corner (Jaycee Horn), but the Rams were the team struggling to cover downfield, with cornerback Emmanuel Forbes in coverage for two deep Panthers touchdown passes.
The Rams are 1-3 this season when their defense finishes with negative EPA. That included a season-worst -12.0 against Carolina. The defense was worse than that four times last season, so this game is looking like an outlier.
• Hail the AFC South: The Jaguars (8-4, third in the AFC), Colts (8-4, sixth) and Texans (7-5, eighth) all have winning records entering Week 14.
That seemed unusual, but the same three teams had winning records at this point in 2023. Jacksonville and Indy had losing records the rest of the way, finishing 9-8 without reaching the playoffs. The Texans went 10-7 and won a playoff game.
Houston is the team to watch after the Texans beat the Colts, who lost newly acquired corner Sauce Gardner to a calf injury early in the game.
• Nine straight: The Broncos’ ninth consecutive win, 27-26 in overtime over Washington on Sunday night, was their fourth in a row by four or fewer points. Only seven other teams, including the Tim Tebow-led 2011 Broncos, have had such a streak, per Pro Football Reference. Only the 1986 Giants have had a longer streak, at five games. This Denver team invites a closer look, soon.
