Special edition of PFTPM because the second big coaching domino has fallen.

All along it's been believed that at the end of the day, two guys stood out above and beyond the

others in the 2025 coaching carousel, Mike Vrable, Ben Johnson. Two days, really less than two days,

after the Lions' playoff run ended with a thud. Ben Johnson exits for a division rival.

Ben Johnson and the Bears currently, and I want to make sure I get this 100% accurate,

finishing up details on a contract with the Chicago Bears become the team's next head coach.

It's surprising for a couple of reasons.

Number one, the speed with which this happened, because I had a conversation with

someone in the know on Saturday while I was traveling to Philadelphia for the

playoff game that we did yesterday.

Johnson was in phase one of the entire process, information gathering, presentation of the options to be

presented to him when the lions were done, whenever that might be. They didn't expect to be

done so quickly. Phase one moved with great expedition to phase final, and the deal was done. I tried to get a feel for what

the ultimate factor was that caused him to pick the bears. Gut feeling is what I was told. Now,

the gut feeling is the product of a variety of things, and one of the keys is this. He wanted

alignment with the front office. Nothing says money or nothing says alignment like

money. If you're going to give the guy a contract that pays him a ton of money, we don't know the

number yet, over under 14 and a half million, although who knows how much of it will know about

and how much of it will be funneled to Johnson through some other avenue. That happens from

time to time. But it's possible he's blown the lid off the entry-level head coaching curve.

Because remember last year, there was a report from ESPN that teams were scared away by what he

was looking for without ever telling us what he was looking for. And I don't think that was fair then.

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