CHICAGO — With the Chicago Bears scratching the surface of what they aspire to become offensively, there’s a mighty long way to go to build a juggernaut like the one Ben Johnson was an integral part of in Detroit.

Five games into the season, the Bears have done something the franchise has accomplished only three times since 1958 — score 21 points or more in each game. Entering Week 7, the Bears (3-2) are 10th in the NFL in scoring, averaging 25.2 points per game.

That’s significant growth when considering the franchise ranked 28th last season and has finished in the top 10 only four times in the previous 30 years — 2018 (ninth), 2013 (second), 2006 (second) and 1995 (eighth). Seven times in that span the Bears were bottom five in scoring.

There has been rapid improvement in a number of areas. Pass protection has been upgraded. Explosive plays are happening with more regularity. It doesn’t hurt that the team is tied for first in turnover margin at plus-8. On Monday, in a 25-24 victory over the Washington Commanders at Northwest Stadium, a struggling running game came to life.

Examining how the Bears got rolling on the ground — D’Andre Swift had 14 carries for 108 yards (7.7 average), and the team totaled 145 rushing yards — provides a glimpse of how Johnson and his coaching staff found ways to improve on the fly coming out of the bye week.

Swift had five explosive runs — defined as a gain of 10 yards or more — and all of them came out of 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three wide receivers). The Bears leaned into that personnel grouping heavily. Out of 64 snaps, Rome Odunze had 62, followed by DJ Moore (60), Olamide Zaccheaus (54) and Luther Burden III (15). It was a bit of a departure from some of two-tight-end packages we’ve seen, but each week is a unique entity.

“(Swift) has been the same guy since I came here,” Johnson said. “It’s what I remember from my Detroit days when he was a rookie, all the way until he left town there. This guy is an explosive athlete. We just got to give him some space, and he can do some dynamic things with the ball in his hands. That’s been the case all season.

“I’m glad it came to fruition when we needed it. He has that ability to ignite our offense, give us a spark, make people miss in space, and he can be dangerous. And so that’s our mission as coaches and as his teammates is to help him find that space.”

That space was opened on the perimeter of the Commanders defense. From reduced formations and bunch sets, the Bears consistently gained number advantages on the edges against a defense that was missing a pair of defensive ends. The Bears had numbers and angles, and when you can achieve both, there usually will be running lanes.

Creases and holes had been hard to find through four games. It was inconsistent across the board. How the coaching staff came to the plan for the Commanders its not going to say. But it’s almost as if the Bears dove into a self-scout during the bye and asked, “How do we make our core run concepts work?” They didn’t change who they are. It was a good dose of toss and wide zone. We saw that from Johnson in Detroit and witnessed it, without a lot of profit, through the first month.

They used different personnel, formation and presnap movement — more than we saw earlier in the season — designed to gain an edge and make plays go. It was the same runs, some packaged a little differently as they found a way to do it. The Bears were not going to change their offense, identity or anything like that in 15 days. No team is going to change its identity during a bye week, but the Bears found a way to get the engine humming.

It doesn’t mean they don’t like the idea of running the ball out of 12 personnel with two tight ends. In this matchup, they wanted to get the Commanders in nickel, spread out their defense and attack the edges.

A challenge moving forward will be having success running more out of other personnel groupings and formations. It’s not always going to be as easy to win on the perimeter as it was at Washington.

Quarterback Caleb Williams has made clear improvements since training camp. He’s managing the huddle better. He has increased command of the huddle, and his yards per attempt have climbed from 6.3 as a rookie last year to 7.4. He has been better from the pocket and has a 118.6 passer rating on third down. The deep ball has been more productive.

Williams’ completion percentage remains well off of where the Bears want it. He’s 29th among 34 qualifying quarterbacks at 61.6%, a tick below his figure from 2024. That’s an area the coaches are going to want to see steady improvement. Some are simply passes Williams is missing. Others can be attributed to him still being a tick slow at times working through progressions, as was the case on the incomplete fourth-down throw for Rome Odunze.

Offensive coordinator Declan Doyle talked about Williams tying his feet to his eyes and said completion percentages climb for quarterbacks who can find an outlet late in the down with the third and fourth reads. The miss to Odunze happened after Williams first looked front side, but again, he was late getting to the back side of the play.

“You can’t just say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to complete the ball,’” Doyle said. “It’s, ‘OK, well how do I do that?’ And that’s by continuing to stick with three, four or five in the progression.”

The Bears have not proclaimed any sort of offensive breakthrough, even as they’ve scored more than the offense usually does in these parts, at least through five games.

“We’ve gotten better,” Doyle said. “But we’ve got to get a lot better.”

Johnson and the entire staff have been harping on eliminating unforced errors, things such as penalties, especially those before the snap. The win Monday was the first game without a false start.

“If we don’t beat ourselves on offense, I think we can do some pretty good things,” Johnson said.

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