Their man

 Everyone knows the one about the New Guy, if they at all pay attention to the arrivals and departures of marquee coaches. The New Guy is always gonna be The Guy.

At least until he's not.

And so we come now to the Chicago Bears getting their New Guy, whom all of Chicagoland is convinced is The Guy. His name is Ben Johnson, he's 38 years old, and what's got the Bear Down crowd high-fiving over their Old Styles is that everyone -- and I mean everyone -- wanted him. 

The offensive coordinator who turned the Detroit Lions into a scoreboard-denting machine was deemed the No. 1 target for NFL teams seeking new head coaches, at least by people who deem such matters. So for the Bears to land him was most un-Bears-like in a refreshingly upbeat way.

"Get ready to be uncomfortable," was Johnson's message to the Bears players at his first news conference. "We're gonna push. We're gonna challenge."

How great was that? And how perfect did the man look standing up there in a Bears-orange tie and a Bears-blue sports jacket with a Bears logo on it?

He looked like a young god, by god. He looked like a winner. He looked like the perfect guy to take Caleb Williams -- who quietly put up superb rookie numbers for a crash site of a team -- to the sometimes mythical next level, and with him the Bears.

"Uh-oh," you're saying now. "We know what's coming next. You're gonna whiz on the parade now, aren't you?"

Um, no. Well, kinda. 

Actually what I'm going to do is remind everyone that once the giddy wears off, reality sets in. And the reality here is Johnson is going to work for the McCaskey Bears, whom past experience tells us could lose a horse race if they were riding Secretariat and everyone else was riding dear old Dobbin. 

Couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat, as they saying goes. Couldn't swim if they did if they were Michael Phelps. You get the idea.

They are, remember, the brain trust that hired the Two Matts, Nagel and Eberflus. Like Johnson, people thought highly of them as coordinators. And like Johnson, neither had ever been an NFL head coach before.

Johnson, in fact, has never been a head coach at any level. Not at a middle school. Not at a high school. Not as a graduate assistant and tight ends coach at Boston College. Not at first Miami and then Detroit in the NFL.

So this is a step into the unknown for him. Maybe he'll be the next Sean McVay (Rams), Matt Lafleur (Packers), Demeco Ryans (Texans) or Kevin O'Connell (Vikings). Or maybe he'll be Josh McDaniels -- once the Ben Johnson of head coaching candidates, and now back as a coordinator with the Patriots after failing abysmally in the big chair.

It requires a whole different skill set, being a head coach in the NFL. Some guys take to it as if they were born to it. Some guys don't.

A lot of that is determined by the organization that surrounds them. Which is frankly the only reason the Blob is slowing the roll with Johnson.

In a vacuum, he's got everything it takes to be a successful -- youth, energy, smarts, 13 years experience in the NFL. And he seems the perfect fit as the quarterback whisperer for Williams, who in his first pro season passed for more than 3,500 yards, 20 touchdowns and just six interceptions while completing 62.5 percent of his throws.

It was easily the best rookie season for a quarterback in Bears history. And he did it for a 5-12 team that left him running for his life most weekends.

Ben Johnson has a lot to work with, in other words. And if he wasn't capable of that work, half the league wouldn't have wanted him as their head coach.

But it only happens if the McCaskeys and the Bears front office are smart enough to stay the hell out of his way. The track record there ain't good, admittedly. But you know what they say: Hope springs eternal.

Even in the fall, perhaps.