The Chicago Bears remain a work in progress in more ways than one in the view of head coach Ben Johnson.

The Bears are 0-2 and own the NFL’s worst point differential (minus-34), which pretty much speaks for itself. For Johnson, the problems stem in part from bad preparation because his squad’s “practice habits are yet to reflect a championship caliber team.”

“We should be going to the football, finishing hard,” he told reporters when elaborating on that idea. “We talk about it all the time with the offensive players that our fundamentals, our finish and our technique, they need to show up in walkthrough, they need to show up on the practice field. That’s how it shows up on game day. Simple things of how do we properly block? How do we catch the ball? How do we block after the catch? Ball security and things like that. It’s the little things that you learn in youth league football that even at this level, they make a huge difference.”

Nobody expected Johnson to immediately transform the Bears into a Super Bowl threat. A lot of the optimism that surrounded his initial hiring has already started to wane, though.

Chicago gave up 21 points in the fourth quarter in Week 1, with Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy guiding his offense on three straight touchdown drives.

Week 2 was even worse, with the Detroit Lions piling up 511 yards and 52 points in a blowout win over their NFC North rivals.

Caleb Williams’ performance hasn’t been encouraging, either. The second-year quarterback is averaging 6.4 yards per attempt and 208.5 yards per game, which are almost exactly equal to his 2024 output (6.3; 208.3).

Two games aren’t enough to draw any firm judgments about the Johnson era in the Windy City. But the coach seemed to be pretty candid in saying the road to becoming a winning team is still long.