Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Ben Johnson wants faster starts by Bears' offense

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Rahimi Harrison Grody. That's a show trying to win a Marconi right there. Middays 10 to 2 on 1043, The Score. Oh, love a little daft punk on a Thursday. I like it. This is Rahimi Harrison Grotie on 1043, the score. It's stronger. And then, you know, Kanye took it, remixed it.

Who? Oh, Kanye. I still call him Kanye. I remember the old Kanye. Apparently he's playing at Soldier Field. Did you guys see that? I did see that. Yeah. Yeah.

I won't be going to see him. You know where I'm on my concert. On my concert thing. I support old Kanye. I'm going to go see a comedy show in October. What are you going to see? Kev on stage. Oh, that ought to be amazing.

Yeah, he's good. He's hilarious on Instagram. Yeah, so I'm going to see him. That's going to be my closest thing I can give you to a concert is a comedy show these days. Look, I ain't got much left in me. I ain't got much left in me. You talk like your. 80 and you're not, you're in your mid-40s.

I'm 80 in concert years because of the number of marquee concerts I have been to in my lifetime. Oh, what a brag. No. I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to Casey Musgraze tomorrow at the United Center. Okay, you called me out. You got me there, Ray. You got me there. Also, Kevin Stage ruled on, somebody asked him the hairbrain question of can we retire, can

we talk? He was like, the answer is no. Absolutely not. What are you talking about? What? Kevin Campbell? classic? Remember that from my freaking high school dance? What are we talking about?

I was really, yeah, I said, you remember I say you the video? Because somebody asked him this. Somebody. I want to know your name. What do you? What? Yeah, exactly. So, apparently there's a lot happening at joint practices today. Love it. Ben Baby, my fellow North Texas, Mean Green, who covers the Bengals for ESPN, tweeted this 15 minutes ago. Not sure what just happened in the low red zone, but Caleb

Williams found a wide open Khalif Raymond for a touchdown. Ooh. I don't hate that. We haven't seen that yet. That's not something that we've been able to see in game action. That's for sure. So here's my problem, Layla. I'm trying to figure out, can we really measure the Bears' offense by what we know

this Bengals defense to be? The answer is no. Can we talk? But at the same time, to quote Kev on stage. I do feel like we can measure the Bears defense because we know what the Bengals offense is. I think the Bengals also feel the same way. Like they can't measure their offense.

Offense against the Bears defense? Like we know. There may be another 47 to 42 game just as to what's happening. Like Ben Baby else is, Zach Pearson said that too. He goes these two teams are basically the same, LOL, because it's true.

Ben Baby also said this 20 minutes ago. Offense is humming right now in the red zone for both teams. He's just a baby. Who's shocked? Who's shocked? Joe Burrow connecting with Jamar Chase. Oh. Caleb Williams hitting Colston Loveland.

Hmm. Is anybody shocked by any of this? Did they just get together in? And was it Ben Jones and or Ben Johnson and Zach Taylor? And they were just like, hey, you guys really like offense, right? Like, do you want to get together and just have more offense? What do you think about? Don't tell the defensive coordinators.

We're having joint practices with Cincinnati. Seriously, when you think about the Bears and them practicing, like joint practice against someone, there's no other team that seven on seven most resembles. Yeah, the actual football game and what it would be than Bears versus Bengals. We can go back to last year's tape. We can go back to this year and just what the defense is like. Remember, the bingo's lost their best defensive player from a year ago or just the best one they had on the roster because he was hurt prior to the time.

They lost their pass rush guy. Yeah. Not guys. Guy. The bears don't have their supposed super nickel or just Clark Kent nickel, however you want to call them these days. You know? He lost his way to the phone booth a long time ago.

So yeah, we may, do you know what happened? Two offensive junkies may have just. decided to get together and have a convention. Defense is be damned. But in the midst of all of this, I tell you about the success of Caleb Williams and some of these joint practices. That is a good thing. So this morning over in Cincinnati, Patrick Finley from the Chicago Sun Times

asked Ben Johnson about Caleb Williams wanting to start faster. Caleb is talked about wanting to get off to a faster start. Is that something that you can watch in a joint practice that, and sit there and go, okay, this may apply to games? Yeah, I mean, I think Anytime you hit the grass, whatever you emphasize, you want to see show up. And so, yeah, we start off, I think, today with the seven-on-seven in the red zone.

You'd like to see him start off hot there. And we talked about it this morning in the team period. We'll work some base downs there when we come together as a unit and like to see us get off to a fast start also. You know, last game, that was kind of the, the part that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, even though you win, you know, 34 to 10, well, you're down 10 to nothing at the end of the first quarter,

and you have a couple three-in-outs on offense. And so each week you try to pick out a couple things of room to grow and improve, and that'll be our theme here this week is can we start faster, not only in practice, but also in the game on Saturday. Okay, reasonable, reasonable. But how much can you really see that if we don't know when your quarterback's playing? I hate to go back to the Trump card of I trust Ben Johnson in all things offense specifically, but I think that's where I am on this.

And I'm trying to find him saying something that makes me be like, oh, that's a bridge too far. This isn't it. Nothing he said this offseason training camp has led me to believe that I should take a little bit of my faith away. Does that make sense? Yeah. And don't forget that Ben Johnson also said early in the season last year it was regular season time. but that his team wasn't practicing to the level of a championship caliber team. So when people talk to him about how physical the practices are,

you know, there's a lot of injuries that we've talked about as to whether or not they need to dial it back, I also don't think that that's necessarily the case. I'm more concerned about when the bears say somebody's ready and they're not as opposed to people suffering injuries in training camp. I think we've all been traumatized by the setback that happens of the last minute that costs what you perceive to be valuable minutes and preparation time out the window in a game.

Like if you're in pregame warmups and all of a sudden you can't go, but they were expecting you to be able to go. Look, this happens to other teams all the time. It just usually doesn't happen with a guy who's just coming back from injury. Right. Right. And that's the flip side of this. But I don't think there's a person out there watching the bears,

including Caleb Williams, who doesn't want to start faster given how these games all ended last year. It was incredible. But they talked about it during the season last year, how they wanted to have a bigger lead earlier so they could feel better, so they could relax. Also, you're smoking that bad stuff if you believe Caleb Williams doesn't know the knock on him going into year three. The knock on him is, oh, great finisher doesn't do enough at the beginning of games. He understands that.

Exactly. But it's still nice to hear how the head coach views it, you know, how Ben Johnson sees that playing out. And you would think that in some of these, what's out like very competitive practices, and very offensively productive, that you would get some of that. By the way, Ben Baby also reporting that Joe Flacco got intercepted. So now we're seeing Joe get some time over a QB in some of the practices as well. Let me go Google this because I...

It says Ben, he tweeted, Anthony Johnson Jr. takes advantage of a Joe Flacco pass that sales a touch and gets an I-N-T. 41-year-old Joe Flacco, that guy? Yeah, when Joe Flacco tonight goes to have dinner by himself, his nice quiet dinner by himself. Thursday, classy. Will he be dwelling on the interception or will he just let it go

while he has his solo dinner? I like to imagine that he lets it go when he's at the bar by himself and being inconspicuously, you know, enjoying a drink, a glass. I picture him with a glass of red. Does that sound about right? Yeah, yeah.

Because you don't want to do the hard stuff in season during training. Hard liquor, you mean. Yeah, so you just straight up a glass of wine. Yeah, I don't know, though. LeBron ask, if you will. I don't know, though, because It's, it's, I don't know what, I don't know how that works for people's training programs.

That's really what it comes down to. In terms of the alcohol consumption? Yeah, I have no clue. If LeBron at age 85, because that's what I imagine, he will actually retire and give up his, at that point, what, Big Three League? Adventure his side quest to own Big Three. You know LeBron's going to be out here like the picture that we got to sit yesterday at Von Miller. Yes.

Yes. That's what I pictured LeBron being. Although he's got better here here. He can, he can, he can read. generate a little bit better. He's got the best hair techs in the game, as they say. We have some listeners who do some funny things with the Photoshop. There's no doubt about that. No, I love it all. Look, but seriously, Joe Flacco, more power to you. You are carrying the mantle for everyone over the age of 40 that believes the prime is not over. Yeah, man, still got it. I love it.

I love to see it. Yeah, and in the meantime, Joe Burroughs just out here. Like, that's the other part. Like, oh, yeah, Joe Burrow. Remember that time the Bears didn't see him. He's now on the schedule this year. I double checked just to make sure. It's a good double check. There will be no Jamar Chase in the regular season doing things, bad things to the Bears. Why do I get the feeling?

Jamar Chase can jaw now. You know, there is some, Jalen Johnson probably, I can't see him trash talking Jamar Chase. But then again, I don't know. I would like to tease something that will happen in our show that we didn't talk about yet, but it's going to be towards the end of our show. But speaking of trash talking, there's a certain Chicago Bull

that did not learn a lesson about trash talking from last season. Just throwing it out there. No, I know what you're talking about. You can't be messing with the Don? You can't be doing it. Can I give you one more tweet because I think it'll put a, well,

I don't know if it put a smile on your face, but maybe like something positive about someone we don't talk positively enough about? Yeah, I'd like to mix it up. All right. So this comes from Kelsey Conway, who's the Bingles beat reporter for the Cincinnati Inquirer. I'm watching the bingles' offense. So far, the big winner of the day is T. Higgins, who's caught six passes in a T.D.

I know you're thinking this is not positive, Marshall. Why are you reading me this? Also, kind of how the game played out last year, but he had a great game. It did. Burrow was briefly touched by Dio Odingbo of the Bears and pushback, and a small scuffle ensued with the Bingo's O line stepping in. was broken up quick. But Dio, hey, this is flag football, as I wanted to be. Maybe you get a flagpole there, a sack on a flagpole. Motivated. Motivated, Dio. Indeed, he sounded motivated. He did indeed.

Coming up next here on Rahimi Harrison Grotie, it is time to talk. NFL, not just bears, not just bangles, all things with Mike Florio, the creator, editor-in-chief of pro football talk. He wasn't on yesterday. We had a short show. We had to go to crosstown. And then we had to watch that cross town game where Jose Orkitti was all world. So he's on today. Thanks, thanks Jose Orkitti. Mike Florio is next.