Bears coach Ben Johnson has mastered the art of turning the page

If all things were equal, the Bears’ first team meeting of each week would feel the same after a win as it did after a loss. Corrections would be made with impersonal precision.

That’s not the case, though, inside Halas Hall or anywhere else.

But Ben Johnson can try.

“We try to be as consistent as we possibly can and we tell them the truth and it's not about hurting feelings or anything like that,” the Bears coach said Wednesday. “We're all in the business of getting better.”

That’s as true now — in a week the football-loving world officially fell in love with the Bears after a 34-17 win in Seattle — as it’s been at any point in Johnson’s career. And that's why, even in the minutes after beating the defending Super Bowl champions Monday night, Bears players were hesitant to make any grand declarations about the message they sent to the league.

“We’re not really focused on everybody else … ” safety Cam Lewis said. “It was just our next game.”

Said receiver Kalif Raymond: “We’ve still got a lot of season left.”

And defensive end Montez Sweat: “The tape speaks for itself.”

They’re channeling a head coach that, in his Bears career, has mastered the art of turning the page — especially after victories. He’s had a lot more experience dealing with wins than losses, too. Johnson has won 68% of his regular season games in a year-and-a-half, the highest percentage by any Bears head coach since George Halas retired in 1967. Amazingly, a win Sunday would push him past Halas and behind only Ralph Jones, who last coached for the Bears in 1932, in franchise annals.

Johnson hasn’t won this many games without knowing how to get his players to turn the page from week-to-week. He can’t tell his players to ignore the outside world — “We’re in a day and age where everybody sees everything on their cell phones,” he said — but he can encourage them to put zero stock in it.

“We’ve gotta keep winning,” Johnson said. “We’ve gotta win each and every week. We gotta go 1-0 this week. That’s all we care about. That’s all we’ve talked about for the last year and a half in this building, and that doesn’t change, no matter what our record is and what’s happened previously. We’re gonna go right back to work. We’re gonna prepare just like we’ve been doing.”

That’s in part how the Bears won four consecutive games last year and then, after a loss, five more in a row. The Bears currently are riding a three-game winning streak, their third stretch with at least that many wins since Johnson’s arrival. Coach Matt Eberflus, by contrast, had one three-game winning streak in almost three seasons.

Johnson's turn-the-page mantra is not just messaging, either. It’s starts with film study.

“I believe in the coaching staff, I believe in the players, I believe in our process,” Johnson said. “And our process is one of hard work and belief. That’s what we just continue to hone into.”

Players naturally take coaching points with a better attitude after wins. It’s human nature.

But that doesn’t make the corrections any less important.

“When you win, all the mistakes are minimized,” Johnson said. “And then when you lose, everything gets magnified to the nth degree. But they're still there. Each and every game, there's always things that we've got to clean up and get better at.”

If anything, Johnson said, he can coach his players harder after wins that he can after losses.

“And yet, at the same time,” he said, “we try to be as consistent as we possibly can be throughout.”