No pushover: It's hard to imagine Bears' Ben Johnson, or anyone, outmaneuvering Rams coach Sean McVay

Bears coach Ben Johnson might sneer at rivals like Matt LaFleur and chuckle at predecessor Matt Eberflus, but he knows when he’s tangling with an equal.

More than an equal, actually, in this case. When the Bears host the Rams on Sunday in the divisional round of the playoffs, Johnson will be up against the best coach in the game in Sean McVay.

Johnson doesn’t keep power rankings of his peers, but McVay’s credentials are undeniable. He has the Rams in the playoffs for the seventh time in his nine seasons after taking over a team that had been mediocre or worse for more than a decade. He has gone to the Super Bowl with two different quarterbacks, winning one with current QB Matt Stafford, and has a sparkling 101-62 career record.

When the Bears hired Johnson a year ago, their highest hope was that he’d become their McVay.

“It’s hard to gauge who’s best and who’s worst when it comes to coaching, but there’s no question about it — he’s in the upper echelon,” Johnson said Monday. “All of his teams are well-prepared. There’s no doubt that he’s super sharp on the offensive side, but how he does it as a head coach, bringing all three phases together, is really critical to their success. He knows how to speak to the team and get the most out of them.

“There’s a reason why they’re in it damn near every year since he’s been there.”

As meteoric as Johnson’s rise has been from “snot-nosed computer punk,” as Lions coach Dan Campbell lovingly called him, to a Coach of the Year candidate, McVay has done exponentially more at the same age, 39. Much like the Bears’ turnaround under Johnson, McVay flipped the Rams from 4-12 the season before his arrival to 11-5 with the No. 1 scoring offense and a playoff berth in his debut season in 2017. They went to the Super Bowl the next season.

When it became apparent to McVay that he needed a better quarterback than Jared Goff if he wanted to chase championships, the Rams went all in by trading Goff and two first-round draft picks to the Lions for Stafford in 2021.

They won the Super Bowl that season and, aside from a lapse the following year, have been a perennial threat ever since.

Johnson and McVay are linked through Goff and Stafford. Johnson was an assistant for two seasons with Stafford in Detroit, then partnered with Goff to launch the Lions’ offense to the top of the league before leaving to coach the Bears and start from scratch with young quarterback Caleb Williams.

As McVay looks for his third Super Bowl trip, his team is as good as it gets. The Rams, who started 11-3 before slipping against the Seahawks and Falcons, finished the regular season first in scoring (30.5 points per game) and total offense (394.6 yards), with Stafford now playing better than ever. Their rushing attack was sixth at 4.6 yards per carry. Their defense allowed the 10th-fewest points per game (20.4).

And all of that is in the hands of a master strategist. Even as Johnson has regularly outfoxed opposing coaches this season, it’s difficult to imagine anyone getting the better of McVay in that regard.

“It’s just the way it is in the playoffs: Once you get to Round 2, Round 3, there are no weak links,” Johnson said. “I’ve got nothing but respect for the opponent this week because they’re damn good.”

Not only is McVay an exceptional offensive play-caller and game manager, but he also gives the Rams a better chance of decoding Johnson’s offense. Nonetheless, he won’t take his first-year counterpart lightly. McVay has watched Johnson since his start as Lions offensive coordinator in 2022 and said he sees “a true understanding of what defenses are doing” in Johnson’s play designs.

“What shows his flexibility,” McVay said Monday, “is the ability to have one of the best offenses with a player like Jared, who’s really special, and then being able to have some similar foundational principles with Caleb, but also [being] able to accentuate the things that make him really unique. He’s got a timely feel for wanting to be able to mix in some things.”

McVay specifically called out Williams’ winning touchdown pass to wide receiver DJ Moore against the Packers. The Bears replicated the appearance of a screen pass they had thrown to Luther Burden earlier in the game. The Packers bit, and Moore raced freely to the end zone.

As Johnson coaches alongside several assistants he hadn’t worked with previously, McVay has the advantage of continuity, Rams offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur, Matt’s younger brother, is in his third season with McVay. Defensive coordinator Chris Shula has been on staff for McVay’s entire tenure.

It adds up to this: As much as coaching has been one of the Bears’ biggest advantages — a total reversal from last season under Eberflus — Johnson is unlikely to have the edge on McVay at this stage. This is a step up. On Sunday, he’ll have something to prove.