As the 2024 season prepares to kick off, two players have stepped to the front of the battle line: Jaylon Johnson and Cole Kmet. These two men share a lot. They were both picked in the 2nd round. Both were handed second contracts after some excellent play over the past couple of seasons. They are also among the few holdovers from the last successful era of Chicago Bears football. The team made the playoffs when they were rookies in 2020. Since then, it’s been a nightmarish slog through a rebuild.
For the first time in what feels like forever, the team has talent across the board. Head coach Matt Eberflus has established a loose, passionate culture inside the locker room. Everything points to this season being their year to break through. Johnson doesn’t subscribe to such optimism. He’s been let down too many times.
“Everything that we’ve got in this locker room sounds good, it seems good, but none of that matters. What matters is what we’re going to do this weekend and from every Sunday or Monday, whatever game it is. That’s when it matters. The preseason hype doesn’t move me. We’ve all got to come in here and we’ve got to work, just top to bottom.”
When speaking to Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune, he made it clear his window to win a Super Bowl is closing. If he’s lucky, he has 4-6 more shots at it. That gives him a sense of urgency he’s working to impart to teammates. It starts by learning to execute in tight games.
“All these games come down to two-minute scenarios,” he continued. “That’s what this league is. Maybe you’ll get a couple games where you really dominate an opponent and take it to them and it’s a clean win where you win by a couple scores. But the numbers tell you that doesn’t happen very often. So it comes down to situational football at the end of the first half and in the fourth quarter.
“I don’t know what our stats have been the past couple years, but they haven’t been good enough to win games (consistently).”
“That,” Kmet said, “is kind of where we’ve been falling short.”
They understand that buying into the hype before playing the actual games is never a good idea. Mike Singletary once told his teammates, “Guys, we gotta work. We gotta work to make this happen; it’s not just going to happen.” The two have reached that mentality as well. The only way they’re breaking through to the postseason and beyond is by outworking opponents. Eberflus seems to have established that sort of mentality in this team, which is a big reason GM Ryan Poles hired him in the first place.
Jaylon Johnson is one of the best cornerbacks in football. Cole Kmet has established himself as a top-10 tight end. If the Bears are going to make a run, they will be the ones leading the way. They aren’t naive. Plenty of people don’t think this team understands how to win yet. They haven’t had a winning record since 2018, and before that, they didn’t have one since 2012. At some point this season, the Bears will be challenged. The schedule will force them into a situation where they must outexecute an opponent or lose.
How they respond in that moment will determine whether they’re ready.
