Ben Johnson vs. Brian Flores: The 'mental war' behind Sunday's chess match in Vikings-Bears

Bears QB Caleb Williams did not talk this week like a man coming off a 59-point performance. Facing Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores, Williams said — borrowing a phrase from his head coach — is a "mental war."

Flores and Bears head coach Ben Johnson have gone head-to-head six times since 2023. Johnson's side has won five, and four of those victories were 30-plus-point games when Johnson was in Detroit . Last season, Flores' defense held Johnson's offense to 24 and 19 points, with the Vikings beating the Bears in Chicago and losing by two points in the rematch at home.

Sunday's meeting at Soldier Field comes after Johnson and Flores flexed their respective muscles in Week 1. Johnson's Bears rang up 552 yards on the Panthers, including 291 on the ground. Flores' Vikings blitzed the Packers ' Jordan Love into the dirt, with four sacks and 15 QB hits.

Neither the head coach nor coordinator is showing his opponent anything he hasn't seen before — which is exactly the problem. Three years and six meetings in, both men are still finding new ways to make each other guess wrong.

Brian Flores' defense is about far more than hell-bent blitzing

More than anything, Flores' product is uncertainty. Situation and personnel can tell you only so much about his battle plans. Flores will show all-out pressure, then walk out of it. He'll dress a four-man rush in a six-man look. The endgame is the hesitation: Flores wants quarterbacks spending that extra half-second solving a problem, only to find out they're solving the wrong one.

Week 1 was the cranked-up version of Flores' defense. He sent extra rushers at Love on 78.3% of his dropbacks last Sunday, per Next Gen Stats, which was the highest rate any NFL quarterback has seen since 2023. That tape will have been played repeatedly in Lake Forest this week. It is also the tape Flores has completely abandoned against Johnson and Williams.

In two games against the Bears last season, Flores took wildly different approaches. In the Week 1 meeting at Soldier Field, he blitzed on only 37% of the dropbacks. In the Week 11 rematch, that rate shot up to 67%. Williams was held to pedestrian numbers in the two games (55.1% completions, 6.0 yards per attempt), taking two sacks in each game.

"You've got to be able to go out there and [know] bad things are going to happen," Williams said. "You've got to be able to fight back and stay steady. That's one of the biggest things is not allowing his defense and all of that to fluster you and get in your mind."

That pressure disparity reveals what makes Flores dangerous in this matchup: He's not married to any one version of himself. What makes it so hard for Chicago to scout the "real" Flores is that there isn't one. There's only whichever version shows up Sunday.

"You don't [predict what's coming]. You try to have answers for everything," Johnson said. "[Flores has] been in this division three years now, and yeah, I mean, you'd like to think he's put everything he could possibly do on tape until you play him next and you realize he hasn't yet. So it'll be something new. There always is with him, and that's what makes him such a good coordinator."

Which is exactly why Johnson has spent three years building an offense that, he hopes, doesn't need to guess right.

Ben Johnson wants defenses to respect everything but understand little

Whereas Flores' currency is uncertainty, Johnson deals in manufactured indecision: forcing defenses to account for multiple problems to the same pre-snap look. Everything is wrapped up in similar window dressing — condensed splits, motion, under center, tempo.

"There's shifts, there's motions, there's a lot of eye candy," Flores said. "They do everything that could potentially give a defense problems."

But is it run or pass? That's the question Johnson wants a defense asking itself right up until it's too late to answer correctly.

Sunday's explosion was proof of what can happen to a defense that guesses wrong too often. The Bears gutted the Panthers' nickel defense last weekend, and it wasn't all against lighter boxes. Johnson's use of condensed formations and heavy use of "Duo" and outside-zone runs really put Carolina's outside "contain" defenders in a bind. Drawing perimeter defenders toward the ball moves them closer to the players blocking them, with less space to attack downhill, and it forces them to pick a gap before the picture is fully formed.

Off of that, Johnson and Williams can attack with play action, the standard dropback passing game or plays designed to get Williams out in space, where opponents must respect the throw and scramble possibility. It's the same picture for run and pass, and defenses are constantly guessing which one they're actually getting.

A lot of Johnson's offense is built around finding solutions that work against multiple problems, rather than trying to guess what's coming defensively. Johnson wants to prevent defenses from having clean answers to what the Bears present and force defenses to account for every possibility — and he'll try to do it through any and all means possible.

"Any type of offense that's out there — ground-and-pound, run-and-shoot, RPO, 4-by-1 – he's got it," Flores said of Johnson. "So what are we getting this week? It's hard to know. A lot of the game is adjustments. If they do this, we want to do this. We're going to have our own game plan, and it's the same on his end with him asking, 'What are they doing? How are we going to counteract it?'"

It's just as unlikely for Flores to blitz Sunday the way he did against Green Bay as it is for Johnson to run the same blueprint against Minnesota that the Bears ran at Carolina. Both coaches have spent three years building systems designed to deny the other a stable target, which means Sunday isn't really about who has the better plan. It's about who blinks first.

All the game plans and offensive wizardry sound great until there are personnel issues. That's suddenly a concern that could change the outlook for Sunday's game against the Vikings significantly.

Bears RBs D'Andre Swift (ankle, knee) and Kyle Monangai (hamstring) both popped up on the injury list this week, though both returned to full practice on Friday. Right tackle Darnell Wright (knee) was also limited on Thursday before practicing fully Friday. It's fair to say that Chicago's run game won't be operating at full strength if any or all miss the game.

The Vikings also are dealing with injuries on defense, including to linebackers Blake Cashman (wrist) and Andrew Van Ginkel (chest). Both are expected to play, and thankfully for them, Dallas Turner is coming off arguably his best game as a Viking and could be pegged for even more responsibility. The Vikings' defensive front was also a question heading into the season, but it performed well in Week 1.

If the Bears are inclined to throw more, Williams is surrounded by weapons. Rome Odunze has stepped into the WR1 slot and Luther Burden III 's role appears to have grown from Year 1. Tight end Colston Loveland shockingly was shut out in last week's blowout, so you know Johnson wants to get him going. Fellow TE Cole Kmet , who caught a brilliant TD pass last weekend, has more catches against the Vikings than any other team in his career.

The Bears have multiple options to throw to. The Vikings' secondary, which just welcomed back Harrison Smith , is thinner depth-wise but features good experience in Flores' system.

But the Vikings must also prepare for another Bears wrinkle: their touchdown-or-bust mentality. Johnson didn't accidentally say he was taking aim at the league's scoring record, and Week 1 appeared to back up the bravado. Whether it comes from knowing Chicago's defense has its limitations or from Johnson's extreme confidence in his personnel and system, it felt undeniable in Week 1.

"Scoring every drive is our mindset," Williams said. "That's the potential of us. That's an internal expectation, that's an internal feeling just of what we have up front, out wide and in the backfield. It's an expectation from ourselves to be able to go out there and score every time and figure out ways to help the defense."

And it's just another wrinkle to this fantastic chess match between Flores and Johnson. You know it's going to be entertaining, even if you have no idea what to actually expect.