The Ben Johnson era is officially underway after the Chicago Bears tied the Miami Dolphins in their preseason opener, 24 to 24. Fans and content creators often rush to judgment based on preseason games, and while some important pieces of information emerged from that game, others are being overhyped right now and can largely be ignored. But what did we learn from the first preseason game of the year? Let’s dive into some observations and thoughts from the team’s performance.

At this point, anything we learned wasn’t very positive. Let’s start with Braxton Jones, who was largely awful. Braxton was beaten badly on a few reps, and the ones where he wasn’t beaten, his play looked largely uninspired with poor technique. Is Jones still recovering from his injury more than the team let on? I certainly hope so because what we saw against mostly second-teamers did not bode well for September at this point.

Ozzy Trapillo looked fine in his debut. He was rarely beaten, and most of his reps were solid. He played largely in the second half, which means most of his reps were against third and fourth stringers. You would have wanted to see him dominate the bottom end of a 90-man roster more than he did. So while he outperformed Jones, Jones played better competition, and neither looked fantastic.

There’s still plenty of time before the start of the regular season, but I think we all would have liked to see a better performance from both of them on Sunday.

Other Offensive Line Notes

I thought Ryan Bates played pretty well at center. If he is healthy, he will be the team’s top interior offensive line sub and, most importantly, Drew Dalman’s backup.

I also, admittedly, didn’t believe much in Luke Newman after watching his collegiate tape, but I was pleasantly surprised with Newman’s performance against Miami. He still shows very little power in his blocking, but he did a great job getting bodies on defenders. He does a nice job looking for work when he doesn’t have a rusher on his pass blocking reps, and as far as I could tell, he didn’t allow any pressures.

Newman did have a couple of rough reps in the run game, but overall, I was pleased with Newman. If Newman continues to play like this, I think the 9 offensive linemen on the Bears’ 53 in September are set. It’ll be Darnell Wright, Jonah Jackson, Ryan Bates, Joe Thuney, Braxton Jones, Ozzy Trapilo, Kiran Amegadjie, Ryan Bates, and Luke Newman.

What to make of the running back room

I think there was a lot of rejoicing coming out of the running back room, but there’s a lot of concern there for me from what I saw.

I am not a believer in D’Andre Swift as an RB1. Roschon Johnson being banged up again isn’t a good sign for a guy who hasn’t been able to stay on the field consistently in his first two seasons.

Let’s look at the guys who played. Kyle Monangai looked good running the football. He runs north and south. He runs with purpose. He can break tackles. He looks great running the ball, especially for a seventh-round pick.

But did we see Monangai trying to pass the block? It was a complete disaster. If Monangai blocks like that against second and third stringers, how will he look against legit defensive linemen? He would get Caleb Williams destroyed.

As for Ian Wheeler, I know the broadcast celebrated him, but I saw a pedestrian performance against bottom-of-the-roster players. Wheeler wasn’t good enough. He still has some burst, but not what it was last year. He did have a nice run that was called back from a penalty, and he had a nice play on a pass catch as well, but the consistency wasn’t there against the bottom of the Dolphins’ 90-man roster. Perhaps Wheeler gets stashed on the practice squad one more season and sees if he can recover further from the ACL, but I didn’t see a guy who was going to be able to make an impact on Sundays this fall.

One note on the wide receiver room

I don’t think there was much to note here about the players who played. Luther Burden looked pretty good, and as for the rest of the guys, other than Devin Duvernay, they won’t be on the 53-man roster, so let’s not concern ourselves there.

The most interesting note I had from the wide receiver room is who didn’t play. The Bears sat 10 healthy starters on offense and 10 healthy starters on defense. One of them was Olamide Zaccheaus. As we had previously mentioned, fans shouldn’t overlook him. He will have a key role in the offense, and the fact that Ben Johnson chose not to have him play in the first preseason game fully confirms that.

Slow the roll on Tyson Bagent.

What was up with the broadcast on Sunday? Jim Miller was speaking about Tyson Bagent like he was Justin Herbert. Bagent’s performance was fine. He played just how a backup QB should play. His yards per attempt was only 5.4. He missed several open receivers downfield and chose the safer options.

There’s no reason to be excited about Bagent. He’s a legitimate backup quarterback in the NFL. He has no starter upside. It’s a nice find as a UDFA, but he isn’t a future star. Everyone should settle down.

Case Keenum also continues to show that he just knows how to operate an offense. He dominated third-stringers as he should be expected to do. He’s 37 and can’t play like that against starters at this point, but his veteran addition to the QB room is invaluable.

Nahshon Wright is making this roster

Wright has been highlighted at camp on multiple occasions and flashed a couple of nice plays on Sunday as well. It feels like the Bears may end up keeping 7 CBS with Jaylon Johnson, Kyler Gordon, Tyrique Stevenson, Terell Smith, Josh Blackwell, Zah Frazier, and Wright. Perhaps the Bears figure out a way to stash Frazier for the season on IR and just keep six CBs, but it would be hard to imagine Wright not making this roster come September.

Noah Sewell vs Ruben Hyppolite

The clear winner here was Sewell for the SAM/LB3 role. Sewell made some nice plays at the line of scrimmage and even had a couple of TFLs that helped the Bears’ defense with a successful goalline stand.

Hyppolite made a couple of plays but got caught in traffic multiple times, and if he doesn’t win with his speed, he doesn’t win at all.

While Sewell played well, a couple of his plays were more about being unblocked and him filling gaps and making plays. I don’t want to downplay his performance, but it shouldn’t be considered some breakthrough for Sewell. It should simply be a step in a positive direction for Sewell, who hasn’t been able to find reps on the defensive side of the football during his first two seasons.

Austin Booker was great, but…

I know everyone celebrated Booker’s performance, and why not? Booker was constantly in the backfield and tallied 3 sacks and multiple pressures. But let’s keep in mind, Booker played well in the preseason last year as well, and once the regular season began and Booker started facing starting tackles, he was neutralized.

One of Booker’s big issues last season was stopping the run, and if you watch the Jaylen Wright touchdown run, Booker set the edge too deep in the backfield and when Wright cut back, had Booker been crashing down at the line of scrimmage, Wright would have been tackled at the 4, but Booker was behind the line of scrimmage, had to dive, and missed the legs and Wright scored.

Booker needs to improve against the run, and we saw no indication on Sunday that he has. Hopefully, Booker has improved and can man the DE3 duties this year, but you can’t take too much out of his performance against Miami.

As for Dominique Robinson, do it in the regular season. I’ve seen this dance before. Robinson plays great in August and disappears in the regular season. He’s 27 years old at this point. I don’t care how he looks in these preseason games; we’ve seen it all before.