Less than an hour after the Chicago Bears’ 2025 season ended with a crushing 20-17 overtime home loss to the Los Angeles Rams, Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams crossed paths in the hallway between the Bears locker room and the Soldier Field news conference space.

Johnson had just finished answering questions for nine minutes — on the defeat, on the exhilarating season, on the future — and Williams was headed to give his own eulogy.

For a few seconds, though, the coach and quarterback stopped. They spoke to one another, hugged, then held that moment for an extra beat.

This was, in essence, a thank-you note. Genuine and reciprocal.

A few months later, even the oft hard-edged Johnson still felt gratitude for what that short embrace represented. He paused and, through glassy eyes, offered this.

“It’s why you do what you do as a coach. You know?” Johnson told The Athletic. “At this level, yeah, you want to win games and all that. But the relationships you forge, it’s really still all about that.”

Chapter 1 of the Johnson-Williams story didn’t reach the desired destination with the Bears falling three victories short of a Super Bowl triumph. Yet that stage of the pair’s partnership was undeniably a smash success. For the 11 wins, the NFC North title and the playoff victory over Green Bay, no doubt. But also for the bond that strengthened between coach and quarterback. And not just any ol’ coach and quarterback — Johnson and Williams, the two leaders who together will define the direction of the franchise for the next decade.

That’s why the emotion inside that quick hug felt so profound.

“There’s nobody on the team I spent more time with than him,” Johnson said. “In that moment, you’re both disappointed with the result. And yet you’re appreciative of each other.

“It’s just disappointment that it’s ending.”

That heaviness was palpable. But almost immediately, so, too, was the duo’s urge to get back to work. Together.

Now? The ride begins again. Week 1 has arrived. The Bears, after another demanding training camp, are headed to Charlotte for Sunday’s opener against the Carolina Panthers with grand aspirations for what they can achieve this season.

It’s enough to get the wheels turning in multiple directions.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Williams’ last game

The last meaningful game, that is — to take nothing away from those eight preseason snaps he took against the Bengals last month.

Rewind to Jan. 18 at Soldier Field for the divisional round of the NFC playoffs. Before the hug.

What a night that was by Lake Michigan — full of ambience, emotion and stadium-shaking theatrics as the Bears continued their remarkable season.

We all know the play from that season-ending loss that created the most conversation and received the most offseason airtime. Williams to Cole Kmet. Fourth-and-everything. Final seconds. Touchdown. Pure madness.

To be frank, that play put the entire NFL on notice. What a moment. Especially on that stage, under those circumstances.

The Bears, so many around the league concluded, suddenly had themselves one of those guys: a quarterback magician, a cold-blooded playmaker capable of sprinting 26 yards beyond the line of scrimmage to evade pressure, then possessing the instincts, vision and arm talent to rip a ball 45 yards downfield through the winter chill to tie a playoff game.

Still, a couple of other moments from that January night are worth recounting one last time before the Bears charge into this season. Remember that national anthem, Chicago style, by local legend Jim Cornelison? That felt like something of an arrival for Williams, an awe-filled moment that gave him a true taste of the stage he wants to be on and return to many times throughout his career.

He could see his breath but couldn’t really hear himself think. Chicago’s football passion was lit.

“It was one of the coolest, most surreal, movie-kind of feelings,” Williams said last week during a laid-back conversation inside the X’s and O’s room at Halas Hall. “Just sitting on the sideline, like ‘Wow! I’m here. We’re here. Let’s show up, make some plays and put on for this city.’”

Of course, there is also Williams’ final pass that evening — an unfortunate overtime turnover, with the Bears closing in on a possible walk-off field goal but instead setting the Rams up for their own season-prolonging scoring drive.

Second-and-8 from the Rams’ 48, Williams threw toward receiver DJ Moore. A slight disconnect existed between the quarterback and his intended target. As a result, Rams safety Kam Curl made a diving interception. That was a play with huge ramifications that, to some extent, still sticks with Williams.

“It burns,” he said. “It burns. It’s frustrating. Still.

“It still bothers me today. Every single time that play pops up. Or if the Cole Kmet play pops up, it feels like it was for nothing in a sense.”

Truth be told, the autopsy results on that play proved to be far less juicy than one might imagine, a sort of “it is what it is” collective miscue at the worst possible time.

If Johnson and his coaching staff had to do it over again, they’d probably pull something different from the call sheet, a bread-and-butter concept the offense had more familiarity with and more documented success running.

If rookie receiver Luther Burden III had to do it over again, as the first read on that play, he would have found a cleaner release off the snap and not been engulfed so quickly by cornerback Darious Williams.

If Moore had to do it over again, he’d probably attack his 58th snap of that night and his 1,104th of the season with more purpose and speed. Even with an over route that, under very few scenarios becomes part of the progression, Moore should have stayed full throttle and recognized the leverage in the secondary to flatten his route. At a minimum, he could have worked harder to disrupt Curl’s pick attempt. Worst case: offensive pass interference.

And if Williams had to do it again, he’d probably lock into the game situation, to the time and score, down and distance, and dial back his aggressiveness to move him from his unavailable first read (Burden) to a reliable safety valve option in the right flat (Kmet).

In retrospect, Williams said, he believes that play can be instructive for him, particularly when it comes to his communication process with teammates.

“Yeah,” he said, “just throughout the year, with new plays, old plays, go over every single detail. If something pops in your mind, don’t hold back. Just so that when those moments show up, you’re on the same page with your guys.”

Still, if Curl doesn’t make a clutch diving grab as the ball nosedived toward the grass, that’s merely an incomplete pass that no one remembers.

But that’s football. That’s the thin line between moving on to play for an NFC championship and trudging into the heaviest first stage of the offseason. That’s a margin-for-error lesson, a moment that may continue to burn for a while.

Still, Williams has found appropriate perspective. “You change your lens,” he said, “and you figure out it was meant to be. And that it’s going to do me good and it’s going to do us good in the years to come when we get to those moments again.”

There were no guarantees that the Caleb Williams-Ben Johnson partnership would click. After a somewhat bumpy start, it clearly has. (David Banks / Imagn Images)

I’ve continued thinking about the harmony between Williams and Johnson

Yes, that embrace we described from last winter was significant. But it was also followed by a spring and summer in which the coach and his QB1 continued to put the pedal down on building their relationship, on sharpening their collective vision for the offense, on drilling down on the details that can take the team to new levels.

Johnson and Williams have arrived at the starting gate for this season in a healthy place.

During the early stages of their first camp together last summer, Williams had his concerns about how his connection with Johnson would evolve. Absolutely flooded with the details and demands of learning a new offense, the Bears quarterback later acknowledged there were many days he felt like he was drowning and that he frequently felt uncertain about whether Johnson even liked him.

The head coach has never dismissed those sentiments, acknowledging that, upon arriving at Halas Hall, he was curious whether Williams was truly coachable.

Just last week, in describing the maturity jump Williams has made on the field this year, Johnson said the 2025 version of Williams “might have had a little bit of goofy to him,” too easily “sidetracked or distracted” when there was important business to tend to.

Through that context, it’s amazing to reflect on how rapidly Johnson and Williams built their trust through Season 1, so much so that Williams, once feeling like the relationship was in a “fragile” state, came to the dais after a rousing rally to stun the Packers in overtime in Week 16 and trumpeted this endorsement: “I’ve got the best coach in the world.”

Two weeks later, the Bears quarterback arrived for the regular-season finale at Soldier Field wearing a special-order replica of Johnson’s A.C. Reynolds High School Rockets No. 12 jersey. It was another nod of appreciation, a sign of the admiration Williams continues to build for Johnson.

Any friction or awkwardness that occurs between Johnson and Williams these days seems minimal and short-lived. The two men understand what they’re aiming to achieve and how much work goes into simply trying. And while Johnson continues to be demanding with his push for greater consistency and polish from Williams, he regularly provides positive reinforcement for all the quarterback’s improvement, gifts and, maybe most importantly, his investment.

“He’s taking a lot of pride in his approach right now,” Johnson said. “And it trickles down to everyone around him.”

Williams, meanwhile, remains all in, referring to Johnson as “the teacher that you stick with for a long time and that sticks with you for a long time.”

“One, it’s because you believe in him,” Williams said. “And two, because you know he believes in you. … It’s something you rarely find, something you want to be around.”