🏆 Ben Johnson Is The Bears New Coach - What's It Mean?
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ABOUT 1 YEAR AGO • 12 MIN READ
🏆 Ben Johnson Is The Bears New Coach - What's It Mean?
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Welcome In. We've got two sweet features for you today. Our Footballguys Staff share the (sometimes painful) lessons they learned this year with tight ends. They might hurt a bit, but they'll make us, and you, better for next year.
And then our Bob Harris dives into the impact from Chicago hiring offensive wizard Ben Johnson. Bob lays out the details.
Plus we've got the News and Notes you need.
Let's Go.
J
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Fantasy Impact: Chicago Bears Hiring Ben Johnson - The Bears are finalizing a deal to hire Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson as their next head coach. Our Bob Harris explains what it means.
2024 Lessons Learned: Your 2025 Tight End Strategy
By Rachel Tootsiepop - Exclusive to Footballguys
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RELATED: See lessons learned at all other positions: Quarterbacks | Running Backs (coming) | Wide Receivers (coming) | Tight Ends
In this week's roundtable series, I asked our Footballguys staff to discuss their fantasy New Year's resolutions for each position and their overall takeaways for approaching drafting in 2025.
Yesterday we talked about the quarterback position. In today's article, we will move on and discuss the tight end position.
Lessons Learned at Tight End
Inconsistent And Unreliable Position
Jason Wood: The tight end position is always less reliable than we expect it to be in the preseason. Early in the season, it looked like the bottom had fallen out for Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews. However, both rebounded strongly in the second half. Trey McBride finished as TE3 despite scoring just one receiving touchdown. It was an odd year; one where many managers found success by playing the hot hand and staying aggressive on the waiver wire.
I have two New Year's resolutions for this position. First, draft McBride next season. Positive touchdown regression could easily make him the No. 1 player at the position by a significant margin. Second, accept that rookie tight ends are no longer built like they used to be. Even the best tight ends in history—Gronkowski, Gonzalez, Sharpe, Gates—needed a season or two to find their footing. But now we've seen Sam LaPorta and Brock Bowers rewrite the record books as rookies in back-to-back seasons.
Tipp Major: Tights ends have been the bane of fantasy football for years. The inconsistency of tight ends was felt yet again. Even fantasy managers dropped Mark Andrews at the beginning of the season due to several dud weeks in a row. Fast forward to the end of the season, where Andrews finished his own streak, scoring a touchdown in each game for over a month. The tight end position is fun to predict, and this next wave of rookies coming in should be a decent class. None will be on the level of Brock Bowers, and that's not because I am a Raiders fan. Bowers broke records this season and could be the TE1 moving forward in redraft.
Baltimore Ravens RB Derrick Henry recorded 909 rushing yards after contact this season, which led the league in that category. He also led the league with 42 broken tackles during the season.
Our view: To be fair, Henry, who racked up 1,921 yards and 16 touchdowns this season, was good in general. The 31-year-old 247-pounder also recorded two of the 20 fastest speeds on runs this season. He hit 21.72 mph on an 81-yard run against the Buccaneers in Week 7 and 21.46 mph on a 51-yard Week 5 run in Cincinnati. Henry finished the season as RB4 with 19.3 fantasy points per game. Expect to pay up in drafts this summer.
Philadelphia Eagles RB Saquon Barkley recorded 1,328 rushing yards before contact during the regular season, which led the NFL in that category.
Our view: This isn't a huge surprise with Barkley working behind Footballguy Matt Bitonti's top-ranked run-blocking offensive line. His overall totals also bear this out. While Barkley fell short of Eric Dickerson's regular-season rushing record when he sat against the Giants, NBCSports.com notes that he now has a chance at the overall single-season rushing record, including regular-season and playoff games. With 2,005 regular-season rushing yards and now 324 in two playoff games, Barkley has 2,329 rushing yards this year. That's third-most in a season behind Denver Broncos great Terrell Davis's 2,476 in 1998 and 2,331 in 1997. So Barkley needs 148 rushing yards the rest of the way for the most ever in a season.
Detroit Lions QB Jared Goff led the NFL with 2,060 passing yards on play action passes during the regular season.
Our view: Goff had a career-high 37 touchdown passes, 12 interceptions, and a career-high 111.8 passer rating, the second-best in the NFL, for a Detroit team that went 15-2, earned the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs, and led the NFL in scoring. But his four-turnover game against the Commanders in the Divisional Round playoff loss will leave plenty of questions about him going forward. Those questions will be compounded by the departure of offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, who will reportedly become head coach of the Bears. Can Goff continue to improve under a different offensive coordinator? We'll find out, but on the whole, Goff was excellent last year. If the Lions can excel post-Johnson, Goff will be a reason why.
Updating a previous report, Detroit Lions office coordinator Ben Johnson signed an undisclosed contract to become the new head coach of the Chicago Bears on Tuesday, Jan. 21.
Our view: Johnson, known for his innovative playcalling, has coached the Lions to top-10 offenses the past two seasons, including second overall and No. 1 in points scored in 2024. More to the point, the Lions averaged at least 26 points per game in each of Johnson's three seasons at the helm. The Bears have had four such seasons in the entire Super Bowl era (1985, 2006, 2013, and 2018). While there are issues on the offensive line, expecting Johnson to maximize the abilities of Caleb Williams, DJ Moore, Rome Odunze, and other components here is reasonable.
Houston Texans WR Tank Dell (knee) does not have a timetable for his return at this point since it is too early in his recovery, according to head coach DeMeco Ryans.
Our view: Dell's season ended on Dec. 21 in Kansas City, as the receiver suffered a severe knee injury. It's been a slow process for Dell. He underwent his first of several surgeries on Wednesday, nearly a month after he suffered the injury. The receiver dislocated his knee and damaged his meniscus in addition to suffering a torn ACL, MCL, and LCL after a collision in the end zone with teammate Jared Wayne. He faces a long road back, one that is expected to keep him out through the 2025 season, given the extent of the injuries and multiple surgeries required to repair the damage.
📺 11 Dynasty Sleepers To Target Before the NFL Draft
The Dynasty Fantasy Football offseason is full swing! Join Sigmund Bloom and Cecil Lammey as they look at the biggest dynasty sleepers to target before the NFL Draft!
Los Angeles Rams WR Cooper Kupp said he plans to continue his playing career and hopes to stay with the Rams but does not know what the team will do this offseason.
Our view: "Who knows what is going to happen?" Kupp said. "A lot of stuff is out of my control. I don't have any clarity on what that's gonna look like. Obviously would love to be in L.A. but I don't know what that is gonna look like." Kupp finished the regular season with 67 catches for 710 yards and six touchdowns in 12 games. As The Athletic's Jordan Rodrigue noted, the veteran wideout's targets dwindled during the back stretch of the regular season and into the playoffs. He had four catches on nine targets over the last three regular-season games, was targeted once for one catch against Minnesota in the wild-card round, and caught five passes on seven targets against the Eagles on Sunday. In his 14 games (including the postseason), Kupp had 10 or more targets just four times and eight or more targets six times. Kupp finished the season as WR36, but his per-game average (14.6 points) ranked 23rd.
Green Bay Packers RB Josh Jacobs recorded 737 rushing yards after contact during the 2024 regular season. He also recorded 35 broken tackles during the season.
Our view: In his first season in Green Bay, Jacobs ran for 1,329 yards and 15 touchdowns on 301 carries and caught 36 passes for 342 yards and one touchdown. The 15 rushing touchdowns were a career-high for Jacobs, and his receiving TD was the first of his career. The former Raider finished the season as RB5 (through Week 17) with an average of 18 fantasy points per game. He'll be in the RB1 conversation again next year, with Footballguy Dave Kluge advising readers that a talented back with ideal usage on a good offense shouldn't slip any lower than the top half of Round 2 in drafts this year.
Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn will have his second interview for the New York Jets' head coaching spot Tuesday, Jan. 21, and the Jets' goal is to keep him from leaving the building, according to sources.
Our view: This will be Glenn's second interview with the Jets, having completed a virtual meeting with the team in the midst of the Lions' playoff run. He had interview requests from six of the seven teams with a head coach vacancy and has second interviews scheduled with the Jets and Saints, with Glenn set to visit New Orleans next if Tuesday's interview doesn't lead to a hiring. That said, NFL Network's Ian Rapoport contends that while the deal isn't done and there are still details to discuss, Glenn could be named the head coach by the end of the day if everything goes well. Stay tuned.
New York Jets QB Aaron Rodgers had 39 of his passes dropped this season, which led the NFL in that category.
Our view: Coming off Achilles surgery, Rodgers started every game for the Jets and passed for 3,897 yards, 28 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions. In addition to the dropped passes, Rodgers dealt with a change at head coach and offensive coordinator. It remains to be seen if Rodgers plays in 2025, and if he does, if it will be for the Jets. Appearing on Pat McAfee's show last week, Rodgers explained that he met with Jets owners Woody and Christopher Johnson about his future and that he knows it'll hinge on the hires they make. "It's gonna come down to the G.M. and coach any myself and whether we all want to do a dance together or if it's not in the cards," Rodgers said. We'll be watching for more on that.
Indianapolis Colts QB Anthony Richardson told ESPN.com's Stephen Holder that he expects to work with biometric expert Chris Hess this offseason. Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen recently credited Hess as being 'the most influential person in my mechanical career' after Hess refined some parts of Allen's throwing motion during the early part of his pro career.
Our view: It's all part of a bigger effort by Richardson to demonstrate he can be the quarterback the Colts need him to be. According to ESPN.com's Stephen Holder, no one, including the Colts, wants to consider the alternative. Improvement is imperative after Richardson regressed as a passer in 2024. Though he had only a small sample size as a rookie (four games), his completion percentage dropped more than 11 percentage points from his first season (59.5 percent) to his second (an NFL-low 47.7 percent). His turnovers jumped, too, with his interception rate rising from 1.2 percent to 4.5 percent. There were also ambiguous issues with Richardson's off-field preparation, which GM Chris Ballard acknowledges contributed to the QB's midseason two-game benching. Given the circumstances, bringing a legitimate contender in to compete with Richardson makes sense. We'll continue to watch for more.
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We Help You Win More At Fantasy Football
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