Bears’ Rome Odunze says new coach Ben Johnson is strict, but provides the ‘accountability that we need’

The Chicago Bears come into the 2025 season with lofty expectations after a busy offseason trying to surround young star quarterback Caleb Williams with the kind of support he needs in hopes of snapping a four-year playoff drought. 

They invested heavily in the offensive line and added more weapons in the draft, but as big as the personnel upgrades have been, fans in Chicago are arguably more excited for the new coaching staff. Ben Johnson comes in from Detroit after helping the Lions build one of the league’s top offenses around Jared Goff, and is now tasked with getting the most out of a quarterback with a different skillset in Williams. 

One of his tasks will be scheming up a great offense for Williams to run, and he has plenty of toys to play with on the skill position depth chart in Chicago, including a wide receiver room featuring DJ Moore, rookie Luther Burden III and last year’s other top 10 pick, Rome Odunze. 

However, just as important is building a culture of winning in an organization that hasn’t seen much of it over the last decade. Odunze recently discussed his new coach’s approach in that regard on the Yahoo Fantasy Football podcast with Matt Harmon, noting that Johnson is “strict” and “detailed”, but in all the right ways. 

“He’s been hard on us, man. He’s been hard on us. Holding everybody accountable,” Odunze said. “I don’t know if you heard any of the stories about him at practice, but he’s strict and he’s detailed. And I love it, I think the team loves it, cause that’s the sort of standard and accountabilty that we need to go far. So, he’s very dialed in with his offense and he’s very detail-oriented and he’s very knowledgable about offenses, defenses and the game of football as a whole. All of us are soaking up as much information as possible, and taking his coaching with a strictly business-like mentality. So it’s been great.” 

Odunze doesn’t compare Johnson to the old regime under Matt Eberflus, but it’s pretty clear things have changed rather dramatically and Odunze believes for the better. We’ll see how quickly that detail-oriented, disciplined approach changes things in Chicago, but this has to be music to the ears of Bears fans who have watched an awful lot of sloppy, mediocre offensive football recently.