Ben Johnson on handling hype: We’re the No. 1 regression candidate

Liam Coen and Ben Johnson oversaw major turnarounds in their first seasons as NFL head coaches in 2025 and they’ve been linked again by the topic of motivating their teams for the coming season.

In a recent interview, Coen said it has been easy to motivate his players with the Jaguars by pointing out how they’ve been overlooked despite a 13-win season. Coen said on 1010XL that he doesn’t see any discussion of his team while scrolling the NFL’s website, but sees 40 pictures of Bears quarterback Caleb Williams.

During a Friday press conference, Johnson was asked if he’d heard Coen’s comments and whether he feels he has the opposite problem with the Bears because there is more hype around the team.

“We’re the number one regression candidate, so I think we’ve got plenty of motivation ourselves,” Johnson said. “We talked about Caleb in the past. He’s used to handling a lot of attention, so I’m not worried about that.”

There are plenty of cases in NFL history of teams that take big strides one season without being able to sustain that growth in the years to come. Coen and Johnson are coming at that challenge from different angles, but both will have to succeed in order to set themselves up for long runs in their current jobs.