Ben Johnson isn’t setting the bar at just a Lombardi Trophy. He wants something louder.
As training camps open around the league, the Bears coach made it clear that his vision for Chicago stretches past the usual Super Bowl talk. Ben Johnson said he wants the Bears to become the most explosive offense the NFL has ever seen, pointing directly to the 2013 Denver Broncos as the standard to chase.
“You’ve got 31 other teams coming to training camp saying, ‘Our goal is to win the Super Bowl,'. I want more than that.
I want to have the highest-scoring offense ever, which happens to be the 2013 Denver Broncos. I know how many points per game they scored (37.9), and I want to surpass them.
I want shutouts. I want blowouts."
Ben Johnson via Dan Pompei
Johnson has already been straightforward about the team goals he wants in Chicago: beat the Packers twice a year and get the Bears back to the Super Bowl. But this is the bigger-picture ambition, the one that goes beyond the usual championship language and into record-book territory.
That 2013 Denver team is a massive benchmark. The Broncos outscored opponents by 207 points in the regular season, while the Bears finished with a plus-26 margin.
The gap is enormous, and Johnson knows it. He’s not talking about a small step forward; he’s talking about offensive domination on a level that few teams have ever touched.
Seattle posted the NFL’s best point differential in 2025 at plus-191 and went on to win the Super Bowl. Chicago, meanwhile, hasn’t seen the kind of offensive dominance Johnson is describing since 1985.
Still, Johnson is the kind of coach who makes that kind of ambition feel at least worth entertaining. He’s built a reputation as an offensive force, and he has also shown enough edge and unpredictability to keep people watching closely. With him leading the way, Bears fans have plenty of reason to believe the team can keep climbing in 2026.
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