Throughout his first season as coach, Johnson has been honest when assessing the Bears’ performance.
“The role of the head coach is not to be a cheerleader,” Johnson said Monday. “It’s to say it like it is. If something pops up and I feel like it needs to be said, then I say it. If I don’t, then we keep it moving.
“We’ve got a great group of guys. We’ve got a prideful group. We’ve earned a division title. We’ve earned the No. 2 seed in the NFC. Those are things that we’re certainly proud about, and at the same time, the season’s not over. It’s just starting for us, and our guys understand that. We can play better than what we played at the end of the season and that’s really our expectation going forward.”
Johnson believes that the offense is close to reverting to the unit that helped the Bears average 27.8 points in the six games that preceded their loss to the Lions.
“We’re not far away; you never are in this league,” Johnson said. “You’re really close and so we’ve just got to clean up some of the mental errors we had. I think in the first 11 plays we counted six mentals as an offense. When you’re facing a good team, you can’t do that. And so we’ll clean that up. We’ll be a lot sharper here going forward, and so we’re going to be OK. But when you have eight possessions and three of them are three-and-outs, it’s just not a recipe for good football.”
The Bears defense also is focused on improving. On Sunday, the Lions scored on their first three possessions and compiled 237 yards and 15 first downs in the first half in taking a 13-0 halftime lead.
“We have a number of areas where we can play better,” Johnson said. “But at the same time, I mean the No. 1 thing is we’re looking to limit the opponent with their points. You left that game with a good offense and they only scored 19 points, 16 up until the last 2 minutes of the game there. So I thought our defense played well enough for us to win that ballgame.”
