Ben Johnson: "Our practice habits are yet to reflect a championship-caliber team"

The Bears have started the season 0-2, giving up a second-half lead to the Vikings in Week 1 before a blowout loss to the Lions in Week 2.

In his Wednesday press conference, new head coach Ben Johnson was critical of the way the team is preparing.

“Our practice habits are yet to reflect a championship-caliber team,” Johnson said, via Courtney Cronin of ESPN.

What isn’t Johnson seeing?

“We should be going to the football, finishing hard,” Johnson said. “We talk about it all the time with the offensive players that our fundamentals, our finish, and our technique, they need to show up in walk-through, they need to show up on the practice field. That’s how it shows up on game day. Simple things of how do we properly block? How do we catch the ball? How do we block after the catch? Ball security and things like that.

“It’s the little things that you learn in youth league football that even at this level, they make a huge difference.”

It’s still early in the season, but as a new head coach, Johnson is apparently trying to raise the team’s standards by publicly calling things out. We’ll see if the approach has its intended effect, starting when the Bears take on the Cowboys this weekend.

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