Things are looking eerily familiar for the Chicago Bears this season. Their 4-2 record through six games matches their record in the same number of games last season. That start spiraled into a 5-12 finish on the season and an overhaul of the coaching staff.

Under the leadership of new head coach Ben Johnson, the Bears are hopeful for a different result this time around.

“It’s 180 degrees different,” said Dan Azzaro, a professional lecturer in sports communication at DePaul. “The 4-2 last year was … from a sporting perspective, I thought it was OK. But there were a lot of coaching mistakes.” 

“I think the difference in what you’re seeing here is a far better coaching staff that has an idea of what they want to do.”

When it comes to building a winning culture on a team, he and others say it comes down to having a good coach who knows what it takes to win. Under Matt Eberflus, the Bears were an awful 5-19 in one-score games. In just the first six games of Ben Johnson’s tenure as Bears head coach, they are 2-1 in one-score games, with the only loss coming week one against Minnesota.

“If there’s any doubt of who the leader is, it’s Ben Johnson,” Azzaro said. “Last year, when the Washington debacle happened, they lost 10 straight after that. They didn’t have a leader.”

Things weren’t looking bright for the Bears early in the year after a 0-2 start headlined by a 52-21 pummeling from the Detroit Lions — Ben Johnson’s former team, where he served as offensive coordinator.

“It’s a good sign that after this team got demolished against Detroit, that you saw them bounce back the next week and now be on a 4-game win streak,” said Laurence Holmes, a host of 670 The Score and an adjunct instructor at DePaul.

Despite the changes that have inspired confidence in this season’s prospects, there are still concerns with how the team will hold up. One of those worries has been what some see as a lack of growth for quarterback Caleb Williams.

Last season Williams finished with 3,541 passing yards, 20 touchdowns and six interceptions while completing 62.5% of his passes. This season, he’s on pace for 3,827 passing yards, 25 touchdowns and eight interceptions while completing 61.1% of his passes.

The Bears have had winning seasons with a questionable at best quarterback, but the team has invested heavily in Williams as the first pick in the 2024 NFL draft with the hope that the roster around him and Ben Johnson would unlock his potential.

“That was my job through the early aughts and mid-teens of covering Bears teams who had great defenses and quarterbacks who weren’t great,” Holmes said. “I think the difference is the level of talent with Caleb Williams and the buy-in of having an offensive coach instead of defensive coach.”

Even with the big step up in quarterback play yet to come, the Bears are the only team in the NFL this season to score 21+ points in every game they’ve played.

Defensively, the Bears rank first in the league with 16 takeaways and have the third best third down defense in the league, stopping opponents 30.51% of the time.

“Having a former head coach like Dennis Allen being in charge of the defense plays a huge role in that,” Holmes said. “If Ben Johnson wanted to just turn the defense over to Dennis Allen, he could.”

Allen was the head coach of the New Orleans Saints last year but was fired after a 2-7 start to the season. His short time with the Bears has paid dividends for the defense.

So are things truly different this time? Or are the Bears destined for a repeat of last year?

“The Bears are notorious for doing this kind of thing,” said Eric Serrano, a DePaul student and show host at Radio DePaul Sports and Entertainment. “If you think back to 2012, that’s kind of the bar standard for me.”

“I don’t have optimism … because the Bears started that season 7-1 and still ended up missing the playoffs.”

The only sure-fire way to see if this iteration of the Bears can break the cycle of disappointment is wait and watch.

That will answer the question a lot of Bears fans have on their mind and the one Serrano posed. 

He asks, “What are the Bears really made of?”

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