Score Round 1 for Ben Johnson in long Year 1 Chicago Bears battle

In three seasons under Eberflus, no player spoke of their leader this way. Maybe Ryan Poles did, but he had to do it.

"Him being here and being the head guy and doing all of those things and being consistent with it, so far it's been awesome and I think everybody's been enjoying it," Williams said.

Flus created his nicknames for players and was talked about like someone's uncle, even while his HITS principle rankled players because of the way an objective system was implemented subjectively—unfairly according to some.

The take-charge guy

No one recently has spoken about a Bears head coach taking charge with their personality and expertise early in a process like Johnson has at this Halas Hall. It's been since the old Halas Hall and Mike Ditka, and perhaps it didn't even happen then because Ditka's expertise was questioned around the league until his teams started mauling people.

• Dave Wannstedt's defensive qualifications weren't questioned but his leadership qualities resembled Eberflus'.

• The late Dick Jauron was a knowledgeable, fair and well-rounded football man who failed to really captivate a room or 53 players on a personal level.

• Lovie Smith definitely had his players' backs and an effective way of getting more out of them. No one could ever say he had a commanding presence on the sideline and definitely he lacked it during media interviews.

• Marc Trestman was an offensive cyborg, lacking one half of a football memory bank.

• John Fox offered nothing except his past through three failed years.

• Matt Nagy provided an offensive background, could holler "boom" to get post-game celebrations started, but he was trying to run Andy Reid's offense in Chicago, needed the best QB in the game to do it and required one of the best defensive coordinators while he focused only on offense. In Chicago he never had the QB after he left KC and his defensive coordinator left after a year, so the car drafted off into a ditch.

Mike Vrabel except on offense

Early in this past hiring process, Mike Vrabel was viewed by some around the league as a perfect Bears coaching replacement for Eberflus because of his dominant, tough persona and background as a former defensive player. He would be Chicago tough as their next dominant head coaching personality.

The Bears did need his type of take-charge leadership because it has been lacking for so long, but they really needed it from someone with an offensive background because of the nature of today's game and their own past problems on offense.

Johnson's leadership ability was questioned by some who had never really been around him enough to know its true nature. Then again, this never really came out while in Dan Campbell's shadow except with his players.

Amon-Ra St. Brown and others have testified to Johnson's personal abilities but few seemed to listen.

Now it's out in the open. Reserve QB Case Keenum saw it when he first talked to Johnson.

"It was supposed to be a 15-minute meeting, and felt like a couple hours later I'm like, ‘this is going to be this a special place,’ " Keenum said.

Head coaches need to know how to bring in top people for the side of the ball where they have less expertise. Johnson seems satisfied he has done this with defensive coordinator Dennis Allen.

"He’s a guy that's done it at a high level," Johnson said. "He's coordinated, he's orchestrated a number of high performing defenses. Whether its points allowed, whether it's third down defense, whether it's red zone, he's got a plan. He's super smart."

Johnson talks about Allen the way players speak of their head coach.

"I think he's got a great message every time these guys walk into the building and go to one of his meetings," Johnson said. "I'm really excited about working with him.”

Putting it together

It's obvious from the outset players are being coached harder, which is what they said they wanted from Eberflus' staff when all they got was an acronym.

"I think that the great ones, they want to be coached hard," Johnson said. "That's really the assumption we're making with all of these guys. They all, at one point in time, they've either come up to my office or DA'S office, or (special Teams Coordinator) Coach (Richard) Hightower's office and they've all told us how much they want to be a good player, a good team. They want to be a part of greatness. We're going to treat them as such, and part of that is coaching them hard."

At this moment the Bears have won nothing while they need to be optimistic.

What they're doing better than any other team under any Bears coach in recent years is communicate how they're actually coaching and getting coached by a staff focused on winning.

Merging this communication, tough coaching, attention to details and player skill sets all together and then winning games is the ultimate test, and it doesn't come until September.

Will Johnson be able to see carry this all over to a game situation? Will he have the same patience to let the physical dominance of a running game get established before turning to his pet wild plays or will it all degenerate into disasters with failed gimmicks? And how will he handle inevitable negativity?

Then we'll see if Johnson not only can be a head coach and leader but can also manage situations on any given Sunday.

Round 1 is all that's in the books but in the NFL you can't win the fight without getting to Round 2 and the Bears have had too many coaches who failed to do even this.