WOULD BEN JOHNSON HAVE JOINED THE BEARS IF JACKSONVILLE WASN’T SUCH A MESS?
He said he wanted “this job” in Chicago, but Jaguars owner Shad Khan had yet to dismiss general manager Trent Baalke, which finally happened when Liam Coen played a two-way con game and won the gig
We’ll never know, unless Ben Johnson fesses up, if he would have been so blessedly cordial to the Bears in his virtual interview. What if Trent Baalke already had been fired as general manager of the Jacksonville Jaguars? Would “BJ” — as radio derelicts call him in Chicago — have been more interested in taking that job and bringing his own GM, Ray Agnew, from Detroit?
Those were the rumors. He liked Trevor Lawrence more than Caleb Williams. He liked having the No. 5 overall draft choice and a possible shot at Travis Hunter. He wanted his own partner as his right-hand man.
But Baalke remained in his position. That allowed Johnson to say, “I want this job,” as reported by George McCaskey, the Bears chairman who was sitting in the meeting room. It also allowed him to say as the interview ended, “Did I tell you that I want this job?”
So Johnson landed the gig, thanks to Jaguars owner Shad Khan. For some reason, perhaps because he’s inept atop the franchise, he didn’t dismiss Baalke when Doug Pederson was fired as head coach. That created disorder when job candidates knew not to trust Baalke, who is loathed among agents, recalling how his calm style created bad vibes with Jim Harbaugh and led to the coach’s departure in San Francisco. When Liam Coen was next on Khan’s list, it was stunning what happened.
He altered a job description. The general manager of a sports franchise is supposed to generally manage the operation, correct? Apparently not, said Coen, a man not known among most of you. He made it clear to Khan that he didn’t like Baalke and headed back to Tampa Bay, where the Buccaneers were prepared to give him $4.5 million annually and make him one of the NFL’s highest-paid offensive coordinators. Once Khan figured out his warped hierarchy Wednesday, he finally fired Baalke. Coen then ignored the Bucs, telling head coach Todd Bowles that he was with his sick child at a doctor’s office.
True or false, Coen returned to Jacksonville on Thursday afternoon and met with Khan and the interim GM, Ethan Waugh. And here we thought integrity was wrecked in that job when Urban Meyer, in 2021, chased women at a Columbus bar and blew off a return trip to Florida. Coen might have one-upped him in the con game. Hours later, he signed a deal to coach the Jags for $13 million a year and can pick his own GM.
Fascinating, isn’t it, that Johnson also received that amount? He wanted to pick his own GM but will glom onto Ryan Poles, who wisely said, “Oh, yeah, he’s gonna have major input and say on roster decisions.” In his own right, Coen was almost as successful this season in Tampa Bay, where he unleashed Baker Mayfield — 4,500 yards, 41 touchdowns, 71.4 completion percentage, 106.8 passer rating — while the Bucs were averaging 29.5 points a game. In some oddballish way, we’ll compare Johnson and Williams to Coen and Lawrence. For now, Johnson loves yapping about beating Matt LaFleur twice a year in Detroit — when he isn’t a friend of the Green Bay coach.
He’d better beat the Packers. Or Stephen A. Smith already said he’ll be reposting the clip: “To be quite frank with you, I kind of enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a year.” First, he’d better grow with a 5-12 team.
“I do have a message here for the players. ‘Get comfortable being uncomfortable,’ ’’ Johnson said. “The bar has been set higher than it’s ever been set before. The only way for this team, and for you as individual players, to reach your potential, is to be pushed and to be challenged, and that’s exactly what I and my staff plan on doing. We’re gonna push. We’re gonna challenge.
“As a competitor, I’m not trying to take an easy way out, I want the hard way. I want our players to want the hard way. We want to find out what we’re made of, we want everybody’s best shot each week. That’s how we’re wired as competitors, and that’s how the whole locker room here in Chicago is going to be wired.”
He made his provocation in Lake Forest, not in Jacksonville. And he ultimately allowed president and CEO Kevin Warren to send two drinks for a fan — at a Lakeview restaurant called Old Pueblo Cantina — who sent him a note asking him to “please hire Ben.”
“I’m going to give it to Ben,’’ said Warren, “and hopefully, if we do what we’re supposed to do, one day that note will be framed on a wall, someone’s wall.”
Shad Khan, who never has been to a Super Bowl, doesn’t have a wall.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.