Chicago Bears HC Ben Johnson responds to Jaguars coach’s comments

The Chicago Bears are under the microscope for the upcoming season after winning the NFC North in Ben Johnson’s first season.

Liam Coen won the AFC South in his first year with the Jacksonville Jaguars last season, but his team isn’t receiving the same buzz going into 2026. On Thursday, Coen said it was a blessing to go under the radar, noting that the Bears seem to be getting the hype this summer.

“You don’t have to make up the fire,” Coen said, via USA Today. “You don’t have to make it up. It’s given to us every day. It’s a gift from the heavens. I just go pull out of my phone, look up the NFL Network website and just pop it up here and I’m curious if I see any photos, or anything, about the Jacksonville Jaguars. I think I’ll just scroll right on through.

“I think I’ll see 40 pictures of Caleb Williams and I won’t see a single thing about any of the players on here. So it’s beautiful … I’m going to tell these guys how much you all think they suck, and we’ll keep going.”

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Chicago Bears have plenty of motivation

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During Johnson’s news conference on Friday, Jason Lieser of the Chicago Sun-Times asked the Bears’ head coach about Coen’s comments. Johnson noted that many in the national media have named the Bears as the top regression candidate this season, and the team is using that as motivation.

“Well, we’re the number one regression candidates, so I think we got plenty of motivation ourselves,” Johnson said, via video from CHGO Bears. “We talked about Caleb in the past–he’s used to handling a lot of attention, so I’m not worried about that.”

The Bears are a big market team, unlike the Jaguars. It makes sense they get talked about more than Jacksonville.

With that being said, Chicago hasn’t received a lot of positive press in the media, with many thinking they’ll take a step back this season after losing several key players on offense and not doing enough to boost the defensive line.

The Bears need to take that as motivation, something that helped the team break out last year.

As for the Jaguars, Coen put the spotlight on his team by brining up the Bears.

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