Lessons David Blough can learn from Ben Johnson's Bears offense

Looking at what Blough can learn from his former coach after his first season in Chicago

New Commanders offensive coordinator David Blough has a lot on his plate right now. Having just been promoted from assistant quarterbacks coach, Blough has to put together the rest of his offensive staff and then build a playbook around the key themes he wants his offense to identify with. He also has to ensure that whatever he puts in that playbook helps the development of young quarterback Jayden Daniels. For someone so inexperienced, it’s a big task ahead.

There’s a lot of questions and speculation for what type of offense Blough is going to run. He’s been coaching under Kliff Kingsbury in Washington the past two seasons, but the Commanders just parted ways with Kingsbury for philosophical differences in offensive approach, so presumably Blough isn’t just going to run Kingsbury’s system. He’s spent plenty of time working under the likes of Ben Johnson and Kevin O’Connell, two of the best play callers in the NFL and many of the local reporters are suggesting he’s likely to take plenty of influence for his own system from them.

But with so many different influences and Blough being so inexperienced, how exactly does he create a playbook and an identity without being overwhelmed with multiple ideas? Fortunately, Blough has a good example to follow in Ben Johnson. Johnson led one of the best offenses in the NFL in Detroit and finally took the leap to become a head coach in 2025. He picked the Bears job, with a talented young quarterback in Caleb Williams. There were questions over how Williams would fit in Johnson’s more structured, under center offense when Williams has spent most of his college and professional career to date in the shotgun and living off-script. There’s a similar discussion going on in Washington right now with Jayden Daniels.

So how did Johnson go about streamlining what was an incredibly effective offense for the Lions and tailoring it to fit Caleb Williams in Chicago? There’s plenty of lessons for Blough to learn from that, so let’s dive into it.

Watching the Bears offense at the start of the year, you could clearly see the imprints of Ben Johnson, but it was a slimline version of what he ran in Detroit. The Lions offense was built around an incredibly diverse run scheme with all sorts of run schemes, formations, motions and personnel groups. Throwing all of that at a young quarterback like Williams in one go might have been too much for him, so Johnson dialed it back.

At the start of the year, rather than mixing in a ton of different run schemes and multiple personnel groups, Johnson largely lived in 12 personnel (one running back, two tight ends, two wide receivers) and leaned far more on zone run schemes than anything else. Now, he did maintain a variety of different formations and motions to dress up those zone run schemes and keep the defense off balance, but he stripped down the run schemes and the personnel groups to keep things a bit easier for Williams.

Here are a handful of runs from the Bears opening game of the season against the Vikings. On all three plays, you’ll notice the Bears are in 12 personnel with two tight ends, and they always run some form of zone run scheme. But they get there a bit differently every time. On the first play of the clip, we see a very basic look with two tight ends both to the right of the formation and the two receivers stacked tight to the left. The Bears run a wide zone scheme to the tight end side. On the second play, we see both tight ends go to the left with one receiver aligned outside of them, and again we get a wide zone scheme to the tight end side.

On the third play of the clip, we see a little more complexity. It’s still 12 personnel and it’s still a wide zone scheme, but they get there a bit differently. This time, one tight end aligns as a typically Y tight end to the right of the formation. Both receivers align tight to the formation, one on either side. The second tight end initially lines up outside the receiver to the right. Before the snap, he’s sent in motion to the left side of the line. Then Williams signals him to motion again and he works back across to the right side just before the ball is snapped.

This is very much a stripped back version of what Johnson did with the Lions. By the end of his time in Detroit, Johnson was showing multiple personnel groups, formations, motions and run schemes. Here he’s keeping it all quite basic as a foundation to build the offense up from. None of these runs were particularly effective, but Johnson knew he had to go through those growing pains and stick with it. You can’t skip steps and get to the complex stuff before laying a basic foundation to work from first.

This use of 12 personnel zone runs, with changes in formation and motion continued as the base for the offense through the early parts of the season.

Here’s a few more 12 personnel zone runs from the Bears game against the Cowboys in their third game of the season. The theme is still very similar, sticking to the same personnel group and run schemes, but dressing them up with different formations and motions. You can see at this point that they’re starting to get a bit more success with those run schemes as the Bears get used to them and that the foundation is being laid to build off of going forward.

Johnson is of course known for his ability to marry the run and the pass game via play-action. That’s something Commanders head coach Dan Quinn has spoken about wanting to see from his offense in Washington and probably a significant part of why they moved on from Kingsbury. That wasn’t his strong suit, but they’ll be hoping Blough can learn from Johnson in this way.

This clip shows a few examples of how Johnson worked off those 12 personnel zone runs and built out into a play-action game off of them. All three of these plays use the same formations and motions that we’ve seen from the run scheme clips previously, which helps sell the play-action fakes.

Another key theme here is evident too. Johnson’s play-action pass game in Detroit heavily targeted the middle of the field because the run fakes got the linebackers to bite up, creating space over the middle behind them. But in Detroit, Johnson had Jared Goff at quarterback, who was much more experienced at throwing over the middle off play-action after turning his back to the defense on a run fake. Caleb Williams, as mentioned earlier, spent most of his career before this season in the shotgun and might not have been comfortable throwing over the middle after a play-action fake that turned his back to the defense.

Jayden Daniels is in quite a similar situation, so again this is a good lesson for David Blough to learn from. Johnson adapted his play-action passes to largely target outside the numbers rather than the middle of the field. You can see all three of these play-action passes were plays that targeted throws outside the numbers. It’s much easier for a young quarterback to turn his back to the defense on a play-action fake and then turn and locate a single receiver outside the numbers, rather than having to look over the middle of the field where it’s much more congested and risky.

So while Johnson was still installing his structure and foundation for the offense, he was willing to adapt it to help keep Caleb Williams comfortable. Key themes of Johnson’s offense were clear to see - multiple formations and motions, commitment to the run game, setting up play-action - but he adjusted and accommodated for Williams too. Perhaps one of the best examples of that came from that Cowboys game in a drive just before the half.