The idea that the Chicago Bears are employing a head coach who irks his contemporaries puts a goofy smile on my face.
Days after Bears Head Coach Ben Johnson dispatched the Packers on Wild Card Saturday to secure the franchise’s first playoff victory in 15 years, ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith shared this anecdote while discussing Chicago’s victory against Green Bay:
“Friends of Matt LaFleur around the league can’t stand Ben Johnson.”PURE SPECULATION but LaFleur and Sean McVay worked together in Washington and LA. LaFleur was McVay's first offensive coordinator with the Rams in 2017. They are close friends. #DaBears #Bears #ChicagoBears pic.twitter.com/VkbXXdSRyj
— Clay Harbor (@clayharbs82) January 13, 2026I chortled when I heard Stephen A. say that Matt LaFleur’s friends “can’t stand” ben Johnson. It was an audible laugh that I’ve been thinking about for a few days, especially after sending it to group chat threads with fellow Bears fans. The thought is a hilarious one. It is the type of thing that you’d expect a talking head to share on their show to drum up attention by way of clip farming.
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But perhaps Stephen A. Smith is onto something. Because days after sharing that tidbit, Peter Schrager (Stephen A.’s teammate at ESPN) dished this while talking ball on a podcast with Bill Simmons:
Oh, this is juicy… www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8fS5464/[image or embed]
— Bleacher Nation Bears (@bn-bears.bsky.social) January 16, 2026 at 7:09 AM“That handshake, and all that mother eff stuff from Ben Johnson, did not go over well with the McVay tree and around the league. Mike LaFleur is Matt LaFleur’s little brother, he’s the offensive coordinator with the Rams. And Sean’s best friend in coaching is Matt LaFleur. So when you do the utter disrespect and the brazen locker room video where you’re saying eff the Packers, eff that coaching staff and the social media team clicks go, send it, put it out in the world. And the next day, when you’ve got 24 hours to really think about it, to say ‘no, I’m fine with what I said and my owner’s got my back on that too.’
This is the WWE part of this where there’s actual personalities involved. I think McVay wants to kick the snot out of Ben Johnson. And I think Ben Johnson, who’s beaten McVay the last two times when Detroit played the Rams, has no problem with that. I’ll beat the snot out of you.”
It’s all spits and giggles when the idea of Matt LaFleur’s friends being none too happy with Ben Johnson comes from Stephen A. Smith. However, it is to be taken a little bit more seriously when it comes from an entrenched NFL reporter like Schrager. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still laughing about it — but for different reasons.
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Ben Johnson vs. Sean McVay takes on extra meaning thanks to Matt LaFleur
How about some comments from Rams Coach Sean McVay on the matter:
#Rams HC Sean McVay on whether he’s been on the phone with #Packers HC Matt LaFleur:“What would you guess? No, you know what — we watch the tape, we do our work, and Matt is a very close friend of mine.” pic.twitter.com/LsfESmlnoU
— The Coachspeak Index (@CoachspeakIndex) January 15, 2026Well, now I can’t stop envisioning Sean McVay and Mike LaFleur getting Matt LaFleur and other coaches from that coaching tree on a Zoom call, talking smack about the Bears head coach, and scheming ways to take down Chicago’s football team. In a way, it reminds me of the Kendrick Lamar line in the song Euphoria where he says: “ain’t a 20-v-1, it’s a 1-v-20 if I gotta smack (dudes) that write with you / yeah, bring ’em out too, I’ll clean ’em out too / tell BEAM that he better stay right with you.” The concept of a coaching tree coming together to knock off a Bears head coach is hiarious to me.
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Bears Head Coach Ben Johnson isn’t making friends on the Sean McVay coaching tree. And to that, I say this: GOOD! I’m tired of Bears coaches being friendly pushovers. We don’t need to see Bears coaches yukking it up with their contemporaries. And we certainly don’t need to see them sitting court-side with their rivals. This isn’t to say there can’t be respect between the two sides. But it’s not as if George Halas and Vince Lombardi were chumming around and being buddy-buddy all the time. The way I see it, we are embarking on a new era where these offensive coaching wizards are actually going for each other’s necks — on the football field, of course.
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At this point, I’m craving a Bears-49ers matchup in the NFC Championship Game just so Ben Johnson can take out the entire coaching tree. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. And if we do, it will have meant that Ben Johnson started his playoff head-coaching career by beating Matt LaFleur and following it up by knocking off his football bestie.
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