Uh-oh. It happened again.

The Chicago Bears blew an 11-point fourth quarter lead to drop a heartbreaker in their 2025 season opener to spoil new head coach Ben Johnson’s debut. The rival Minnesota Vikings capped off a three-touchdown final period to win 27-24.

You know those old cartoons where someone has an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other who are giving conflicting, contradictory advice? I’m feeling that right now.

Logically, I know the Bears will be better under Ben Johnson in the long run than they’ve been since the days of Lovie Smith. In fact, there were parts of Monday night’s game that hinted at that.

But another part of me saw a sloppy team with too many penalties that had trouble blocking and moving the ball down the field. A team that blew a lead in the fourth quarter in a game they should have had wrapped up.

We’ve seen that too many times and it’s hard to stomach it under a new regime with coaches who, by all indications, are better than their predecessors.

The Bears did something that they were none too adept at last year: they scored a touchdown on their opening drive, taking an early 7-0 lead. That, paired with back-to-back three-and-outs by the Vikings offense, gave the Bears the early momentum.

The Bears managed to tack on a field goal late in the first half, and Nahshon Wright’s pick-six early in the second half put them up 17-6. But it was clear that even with the lead and the stout defensive effort, the Bears were in a world of hurt on offense.

Williams completed his first 10 passes, bypassing the deeper throws and checking down to his backs and receivers over the shallow part of the field. This is a concept the new coaching staff has been drilling into his head since they took over and he executed as instructed.

The only problem is that he missed opportunities to get the bigger play and seemed to check down a little too early and too often.

On the other side of the ball, Dennis Allen had his guys getting after it, exactly as you’d expect from his style of defense. You could tell early on, though, that they had some trouble tackling, often whiffing on arm tackles or overpursuing. This reared its ugly head in the fourth quarter as the Vikings scored three touchdowns and seemed to move the ball at will.

The Bears were missing three key starters in Jaylon Johnson, Kyler Gordon, and T.J. Edwards. Clearly, that affected them to some degree, but it was not the reason they lost. Or not the sole reason, anyway.

I thought special teams were okay in some cases but bad in others. Devin Duvernay ran the ball back hard and I can see how one crease can send him to the house, or at least give the offense good field position with which to start.

Meanwhile, Cairo Santos did himself and the Bears no favors. He missed a crucial field goal to open the fourth quarter. It was from 50 yards out and was wide right. 

Later, after the Bears scored a touchdown to pull within three points with 2:02 left in the game, Santos’ kickoff was returned out of the end zone, thus starting the game clock and removing the 2-minute warning from the Bears’ clock stoppage usages. They only had one timeout left.

Regarding that kickoff, a lot of Bears fans were complaining about the decision to kick it into the end zone and wondered why they didn’t just kick it out of bounds and take the penalty. 

First of all, the decision was to kick it through the end zone. Not to the end zone. The fact that Santos didn’t do his job is his fault, not Ben Johnson’s.

As a former kicker myself — and not even on the professional level — I can attest to the fact that every head coach and special teams coordinator knows their kicker’s distance on both kickoffs and field goals, into the wind and against it. 

In other words: Johnson and Richard Hightower, the special teams coordinator, would not send out Santos to attempt to kick it out of the end zone if they didn’t think he could do it.

So… hard stop, Bears fans. It was the right call; Santos just failed to do his job.

If you want to blame Johnson for challenging the apparent fumble and losing a timeout, that’s free game. The kickoff decision was correct, though, and the hoopla surrounding it is coming from people just trying to fling crap against a wall to see what sticks.

The Bears defense intercepted J.J. McCarthy once and sacked him three times, but I’m always going to want more pressure, as I’m sure Allen and Johnson will as well.

Between the defensive line’s inconsistent pressure — especially from the highly-paid Montez Sweat — and the offensive line’s pass protection and run-blocking performance, it’s clear the team is not up to snuff in the trenches, where they need to succeed most to be able to be contenders.

Johnson will get a homecoming game against the Lions when the Bears travel to Detroit next week. The Lions, also losing a divisional game this past week to Green Bay, will be out for blood. I never like to say a game is a “must-win game” until mathematics come into play, but teams that start 0-2 historically have math working against them in terms of playoff probability.

Hopefully Johnson, having spent many years as the Lions’ offensive coordinator, can have a good game plan in place to exploit their defense.

If not, we’ll really be scratching our heads and looking for answers at this early juncture in the Johnson era.