New coach Ben Johnson had plans for how he wanted to run the Bears’ practice weeks, how to manage games and how to set up schemes to play to his roster’s strengths.

Although all those concepts were rooted in logic and other successful systems, there was no hard proof of how they would impact the 2025 Bears.

There are now four regular-season weeks’ worth of evidence to sift through. A Week 5 bye allowed Johnson, general manager Ryan Poles and the coaching staff to reassess, to decide which elements of the Bears operation worked and what needed to be tweaked.

That was the point of this week. Can it help the Bears moving forward, especially through a stretch of four road games in six weeks? We’ll find out. The Bears have been good in some areas, but they need answers to these five questions to expect more consistent play and overall improvement moving forward:

Who plays offensive tackle?

We saw a shuffling at this position during a Week 4 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders. It came late in the second quarter, when left tackle Braxton Jones was pulled from the game, Theo Benedet moved from right tackle to left and rookie Ozzy Trapilo stepped into Benedet’s spot.

The Bears got better play from that point, suggesting a more permanent change at left tackle might be coming. Johnson said at preseason’s end he would reassess the position at the bye week, and here we are. He said Monday that he would take the first four games in totality. It sure seems possible, though ultimately uncertain, that the Bears will run with Benedet at left tackle moving forward.

Johnson believes pass protection is the most important thing for a left tackle, and Jones has allowed 15 pressures in three-and-a-half games. His run blocking has also been hit or miss, per Pro Football Focus.

Trapilo would stay at right tackle in that instance, at least while starter Darnell Wright is out with an elbow injury that isn’t believed to be long-term. The Bears are looking for stability at left tackle after a summer-long position battle. They haven’t gotten it yet, so it might be time to shake things up.

Will D’Andre Swift, run game crank it up?

Running back D’Andre Swift’s yards per carry average isn’t great, sitting at a substandard 3.3. We’ve seen some explosives from him, especially if he gets to the edge or the interior line guides him to the third level.

He hasn’t been consistent enough, though Johnson says it’s not necessarily the ball carrier’s fault.

“I don’t think our running struggles were a reflection of D’Andre Swift,” Johnson said. “I think he’s a guy that continues to run the ball very hard, even though the yards per carry aren’t where any of us want it to be right now. He’s as frustrated as anybody right now. He’s very prideful in what he can do and what he brings to the table.

“I don’t feel like everybody on offense yet is pulling their weight, and that’s myself included. There’s a number of things from (Sunday’s) game that I have to do a better job of. There’s a couple calls I was getting in late. There are a couple things that the coaching staff, myself, we could have coached up better to give us a better chance there. And there were some things execution-wise that we knew what we were going to do but the techniques, the fundamentals, we didn’t adhere to them when we needed to.”

Johnson is looking at the situation holistically and believes a better operation, from scheme to blocking to the backs, must improve to get the ground game going. That’s clearly the approach moving forward, so expect some schematic tweaks and fundamentals work up front to help the run game improve.

Can the run defense avoid explosives?

We’ve talked a ton about the Bears’ per-carry-average allowed. It’s not good. Like, 6.1 yards-per-carry bad. That’s an issue overall, but explosive runs are a real problem.

Let’s use the Raiders game as an example. The Bears gave up 10 rushes of 10-plus yards and three of 20-plus. The week prior, Dallas had one run of over 10 yards but seven runs of seven yards or more. None of that’s acceptable.

Shutting those types of runs will be key moving forward, and Johnson has confidence that it will get fixed.

“We’re not making tackles in space as well as we’re capable of,” he said. “We did enough live tackling over the course of training camp. I thought we’d be a little further along in that regard in the first four games. Still a work in progress. Like anything, you look at something where you might be a little bit deficient, you make it a point of emphasis and then I know our guys will take that to heart and they’ll respond.”

Will the Bears get healthy again?

All signs point to this being a good week for the Bears’ health. Slot cornerback Kyler Gordon (hamstring) seems to be close to a return to play. Same with linebacker T.J. Edwards (hamstring), defensive tackle Grady Jarrett (knee) and possibly tight end Colston Loveland (hip), though that’s not certain. Edge rusher Austin Booker (knee) is eligible to come off injured reserve, and he could help on obvious passing downs following a solid preseason, though he might need a ramp-up period once he returns to practice.

All but one of those guys are on defense, and each one represents a significant upgrade when added to the mix.

We haven’t seen the defense operating close to full strength yet, as it was most of the summer. Top cornerback Jaylon Johnson will be out long-term, but getting others back will be a major boon for the Bears overall.

Can offense work pre-snap issues out?

The Bears have nine false start penalties(!), an illegal shift and an illegal motion penalty to their credit through four games, per NFLpenalties.com. They don’t have a delay of game penalty, but they have used a few timeouts to avoid them.

Those pre-snap issues haven’t been a problem every game and seem to have gotten better of late, but clean operations have been achieved. Johnson has taken responsibility at times for not getting the call in fast enough. Williams has shouldered blame for that and issues with his cadence. There was even a Drew Dalman snap that Williams wasn’t ready for that hurt the Bears versus Las Vegas.

Mistakes will happen, but they’re coming too often and causing too much damage. It sets the Bears back in ways they shouldn’t be, and it’s tough to expect they’ll magically disappear over the bye. They should improve over time, as everyone gets used to each other.

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