The Bears got the head coach that they wanted, and which (I think) all of us Bears fans expected them to hire. Within a day or 2 of the Lions losing to the Washington Commanders in the divisional round of the playoffs, former Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson signed on to be the Bears' next head coach. This is something that, honestly, should have happened last year. Matt Eberflus' coaching tenure was a train wreck, and as soon as the Bears decided they were going to move on from Justin Fields and draft Caleb Williams, they should have also parted ways with Eberflus. Instead, they repeated the same strategy that has already failed for them twice before: of drafting a new quarterback, who's rookie development would be stunted by a lame duck coaching staff.

Such unbelievably incompetent management!

So are Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams doomed to repeat the failures of John Fox and Mitch Trubisky, along with Matt Nagy and Justin Fields? Obviously, only time will tell.

There are a few positive signs here. Johnson successfully rehabilitated Jered Goff's career after Goff was traded to Detroit. So he does have that history of turning things around for a struggling quarterback. Goff has been fantastic as a Lion (except for that final playoff game). He's been highly efficient, and has been good at protecting the football.

Photo credit: Photo/Paul Sancya / AP.

Ben Johnson has already shown that he can help rehabilitate a struggling quarterback.

A lot of Goff's success can be traced to Johnson's success as a schemer and play-caller. So Bears fans should also have some confidence that the Bears' play-calling, blocking, and route concepts will be much more competent in 2025 and beyond. We hopefully won't see all the schematic failures that we have seen the past few years.

The dream of crashing the inaugural College Football Playoff is over for UNLV. They lost the Mountain West Championship to Boise State for the second year in a row. Boise will be the automatic Group of 5 representative in the playoff. What's more, 3rd-ranked (in the CFP rankings) SMU lost its championship game to Clemson, which demoted them to the "at large" 11th seed, and leapfrogged Boise State to the 3rd seed in the playoffs. Boise will have a first-round bye in the playoff, and will host the winner of Penn State and SMU.

The loss pushed UNLV back to #24 in the playoff rankings, and they are expected to be invited to the L.A. Bowl.

Boise State beat UNLV in the Mountain West Championship and will be the 3rd seed in the inaugural playoff.

This loss was rough. I really thought that UNLV had a good chance to beat Boise State. UNLV lost by only 5 points when they first played in Vegas in the middle of the season. UNLV was one of the few teams to actually make Heisman candidate Ashton Jeanty look almost pedestrian -- though he still ran for well over a hundred yards and multiple TDs.

My dad and I drove out to Boise to watch the game on the blue turf, only to see UNLV play, by far, its worst game of the season. I'm not sure if it was the cold (the temperature was 27 degrees at kickoff), or if they finally succumbed to the pressure, or maybe there were other distractions (which I'll talk about later). UNLV's offense looked inept, and the defense failed to make any big plays to swing momentum.

Missed opportunities

Usually-reliable kicker Caden Chittenden missed a field goal in the first half that doinked off the crossbar. UNLV failed to convert a 1st and goal at the 5 yard line into points following a 90-yard run by Kylin James. A penalty backed them up, and they failed to convert the ensuing 4th down. The back-breaker, however, was the defense blowing gap containment and letting Ashton Jeanty run for an 80-yard touchdown just before halftime.

Those 3 mistakes accounted for a swing of 17 points, in a game that ended up being decided by 14. And those weren't the extent of UNLV's opportunities to swing the game. Defenders dropped at least 2 opportunities for easy interceptions, and quarterback Hajj-Malik Williams missed several receivers downfield.

My dad and I drove out to Boise's blue turf to watch the championship game.

Largely though, Boise's coaches did a great job in gameplanning. They seemed absolutely committed to preventing Hajj-Malik from running the ball with the option. They played edge containment and kept spies on both Hajj-Malik and any potential pitch backs, completely killing UNLV's option running game and forcing UNLV to have to call traditional handoffs and pocket passes. UNLV is certainly built to run the ball, but the offensive line looked lethargic and just couldn't open up holes for any of the running backs, with only a few exceptions. Greg Burrell scored the team's only touchdown in the second half.