CHICAGO — In a bold move that has left Bears fans equal parts hopeful and horrified, new head coach Ben Johnson promised Monday that Chicago’s 2025 offense will be built entirely on “math wizardry, fake pratfalls, and whatever I can diagram on a Waffle House napkin at 3 a.m.”
The decision comes after Johnson’s infamous “Stumble Bum” trick play — in which quarterback Jared Goff faked a pratfall, a running back face-planted, and somehow it all ended in a touchdown — convinced the Bears that the future of football lies somewhere between slapstick comedy and Cirque du Soleil.
General manager Ryan Poles admitted that hiring the guy who embarrassed his own team into oblivion was “like getting pantsed in public, then asking your bully to move in and redecorate your house.”
Bears chairman George McCaskey agreed. “I saw that quarterback fall down and thought, ‘Finally, someone understands our brand of football.’ This is destiny.”
The Johnson Era: Equal Parts Calculus and Chaos
Known for scribbling entire offensive playbooks by hand and once filling a notebook with the numbers 1 through 10,000 for fun, Johnson has assured fans that Chicago’s play-calling will be “scientifically unpredictable.” Early leaked plays include:
- Pi Formation – every receiver runs exactly 3.14159 yards before turning left.
- The Quadratic Sneak – Caleb Williams solves for x before crossing the goal line.
- Slapstick 22 – all 11 players fake injuries while the ballboy runs it in.
Analysts warn these plays might confuse both the defense and the Bears themselves, which historically has been Chicago’s only offensive identity anyway.
The Weight of History
Johnson’s main task will be developing a franchise quarterback in a city that hasn’t had one since Sid Luckman was still dodging Nazi submarines. Asked if he felt pressure, Johnson smirked:
“Pressure is trying to calculate derivatives at MathCounts while also pretending to be Joe Montana in the backyard. This is just football.”
Vegas Already Preparing
Oddsmakers in Las Vegas have slashed the Bears’ Super Bowl chances from “mathematically impossible” to merely “highly improbable,” noting that at least now the team will lose with style.
Fans, meanwhile, are cautiously optimistic. As one lifelong season-ticket holder put it:
“Sure, we’ll still finish last in the division. But at least this time, we’ll look like geniuses while doing it.”