LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Ben Johnson coordinated the NFL’s best offense this season. The Detroit Lions ranked first in scoring, second in total yards using an efficient scheme featuring an excellent run game, tons of playaction and an efficient passing attack based on timing.

The Lions have been good all three years that Johnson was offensive coordinator, where his work was noted for its creativity, design and ability to attack an opponents weakness.

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The Lions system ain’t broke, so there’s no need to fix it.

That’s not how its architect sees things. The new Bears head coach has no intention of taking his Lions system to Chicago. He’s going to tear it down and rebuild it Bears his talent in mind. And, as you’d expect, it will center on Caleb Williams.

“This offense will be calibrated with him in mind,” Johnson said on Wednesday in his introductory press conference. “We’re going to build this thing. This is not simply a dropping of a previous playbook down on the table and starting there. Nope, we’re ripping this thing down to the studs, and we’re going to build it out with (Caleb) first and foremost, and then with the pieces around him next.”

That will take place in rooms covered in white boards, with yet-to-be-hired offensive assistants and quarterback Caleb Wiliams by his side. Johnson did something similar with Jared Goff, allowing the Lions quarterback input on play designs catered to his talents and preferences.

That’s going to happen with Williams, meetings the young signal caller is looking forward to.

“We’ll get into the whole football aspect and dive into that, and then obviously start doing things how they did,” Williams said. “And not specifically how they did it. But just super creative things that fits our scheme and our players and our personnel and all these different things. I think we’ll dive into that. And it starts with the base stuff and being able to master the base plan of this offense and this team. And then from there, you’d be able to grow.”

Johnson wants the scheme to evolve around its most important parts, but he won’t ditch the bedrock offensive principles he espouses.

“We want the defense on their heels,” Johnson said. “We are always going to be attacking on offense. We believe in multiplicity, that’s both formationally and conceptually. We are going to make things very challenging on the defense each and every week. We want the ability to morph, whether it’s 50 runs in a game or 50 passes in a game. It does not matter. Balance to me is throughout the entire season, not necessarily in the game.

“With that being said, those are broad strokes of what this is going to look like. It’s not going to look like it did in Detroit. We have a completely different personnel group than what we did in Detroit. This entire offense is going to be predicated on the guys that we have available. That’s going to take the springtime as well as training camp to home in what it’s going to look like.”

The Bears need to make upgrades to the interior offensive line. They’ll likely make some shifts to the running back room. Johnson will take those moves into account as well, but finding sync with Williams is most important.

While Goff has been super successful working under Johnson, he and Williams don’t have the same skill set. Williams is far more athletic. He’s faster and a bit more of a freelancer, though that may be less available to him working under Johnson, a positive step for a player who might function better with guardrails.

Johnson considers “time on task” the key to building chemistry between him and Williams.

“The play caller and the quarterback have to be integrated,” Johnson said. “The quarterback needs to be able to see the game through the play caller’s eyes. In my opinion, that’s the only way it works. And so we’re going to spend a lot of time together this spring time, certainly during training camp and we’ll be able to see how much headway we can make. But there’s already things that I’ve talked to him about that I’ve noticed in his game that I want to address, and I want to go ahead and take a look at early and often here.”