Why is Ben Johnson trusting a 29-year-old first-time colleague to coordinate Bears’ offense, develop Caleb Williams? Meet Declan Doyle, and you’ll understand

LAKE FOREST, Ill. — At the Chicago Bears facility after practices, the quarterbacks, receivers, running backs and tight ends all congregate in a meeting room.

In front of them stands a 29-year-old with a clicker, ready to review film and diagnose the day’s field work. Offensive coordinator Declan Doyle leads this skill player meeting after overseeing group pass installations, screens and specialty plays. His goal, which players and colleagues say he accomplishes quite well: sound exactly like head coach Ben Johnson.

So no one questions Doyle’s intensity and commitment to detail, as he tells them on repeat that they’re striving to make the same thing look different and different things look the same. Bears players listen as Doyle reminds quarterbacks the importance of tying their eyes to their feet, and receivers the necessity of route depth integrity. They discuss throwing a “runner’s ball” on crossing routes, to ensure targets can be caught in stride and yards after the catch aren’t forsaken. They pinpoint how the use of 12 personnel, or two tight-end sets, can help diagnose defenses and thus clarify quarterback decision-making.

The answers to the tests, Bears players believe, lie with their coaching staff. Study hard enough, and they’ll pass the test of each game.

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“More than anything, what this staff wants is just to know that we’re retaining all the information, that our eyes are in the right spot, that we’re within the rhythm of the play and not trying to do too much crazy s***,” Bears second-string quarterback Tyson Bagent told Yahoo Sports. “These coaches are paid a lot for a reason. And that’s because if we do what they ask of us, more times than not, guys will be open and we’ll be successful.”

On game day, Johnson is the face of that as play-caller and head coach. During the week, the offense hears more directly from Doyle. “Declan is usually in charge of making sure everybody obtains that information,” Bagent says.

Early returns from the brain trust are encouraging.

Through four games, the Bears’ 25.3 points and 328 yards per game ranked 11th and 17th entering Week 6, up from their 28th-ranked scoring (18.2 points) and dead-last offense (283.5 yards) a year ago. Quarterback Caleb Williams has improved from the league’s 24th-ranked passer rating to 18th; the 21st-ranked quarterback in passing touchdowns per game (1.18) to the fourth (2.25).

Riding a two-game winning streak and coming out of a bye, Bears fans are cautiously optimistic their offense is beginning to click. Monday night brings the next chance to prove that, and to influence the narrative of the 2024 NFL Draft: The Bears team that struggled after drafting Williams first overall will visit the Washington Commanders that drafted Offensive Rookie of the Year Jayden Daniels the very next pick.

The Williams reclamation project begins with Johnson, the most heralded candidate in the 2025 coaching cycle and the biggest name in the Bears’ transformation project. But coaches and players credit Doyle with picking up where Johnson leaves off.

That structure alone isn’t unusual. And yet, Johnson’s decision to trust Doyle — whom Chicago hired as his coordinator before his 29th birthday — is unusual. Only two recent offensive coordinators earned their posts at a younger age than Doyle, per a league data set beginning in 2000: Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay.

Both were promoted in-house, Shanahan with a coach under whom he’d already worked. Doyle had worked neither for the Bears nor Johnson when he earned the job.

And yet coaches who’d worked with both Johnson and Doyle understood the decision. Lions offensive coordinator John Morton even told Johnson during his search: “Ben, listen: He’s another Ben Johnson.”

“I think that’s a good thing,” Johnson laughed, recalling the story to reporters at the NFL scouting combine. “I’m banking on that being a good thing. Listen, I think he and I are a match made in heaven. He thinks very much like me.”

Doyle, whom Sean Payton hired in both New Orleans and Denver, exudes competency more than youth as the Bears preach clear communication and schematic multiplicity. If they achieve and sustain success, don’t be surprised if teams looking for a play-caller and eventually a head coach tap into the next Ben Johnson.

“Right away, if you’re a player or a coach, you’re like, ‘This guy knows his s***,” Payton told Yahoo Sports. “I was saying, ‘Hey, I want to invest a hundred thousand on Declan’s future.’ If he allows me to buy in at a certain [point], I would do that with him.”

As Doyle ascends at young age, colleagues joke: ‘Show me your birth certificate, dude’

When Bears coaches and players pull into Halas Hall each morning, it’s not uncommon for them to drive past a runner along his daily loop.

Sometimes he’s listening to music or an audiobook via bone-conducting Aftershokz headphones. Other times, he’s thinking through his game plan for the day. Either way, his ears are unobstructed when tight ends coach Jim Dray passes by and shares what Dray feels like is at times a daily honk.

No one’s surprised that Doyle is arriving early — to the Bears facility before they do in the mornings, and to a coordinator opportunity at a young age.

Ten years of experience at the college and NFL levels explain part but not all of Doyle’s story.

Doyle’s official break into the coaching ranks began when he was 20 and hired as an offensive student assistant to the University of Iowa staff he’d work for for three seasons. But Declan’s father, Chris Doyle, remembers Declan spending time in the graduate assistant “pit” more than a decade prior. Young Declan wasn’t just roaming dad’s weight room.

“They would give him cards with the X’s and O’s and he would go draw plays,” Chris Doyle told Yahoo Sports. (Chris and Iowa reached a separation agreement in 2020 after player allegations of mistreatment.) “He’d be sitting at the kitchen table drawing plays [when he was] young – 5, 6, 7. And he had football helmets, so he would line them up 11 versus 11.

“He’d put the defense together and he’d run pass plays and running plays, and then he would keep them in a folder. … I think he had a genuine calling early on.”

By 2019, at 23 years old, Doyle was in-house with Payton, Drew Brees and the Saints staff in an offensive assistant role that focused most often on the tight end room, where Dan Campbell was position coach. Players with steeper pro acclimations didn’t faze Doyle. Transitioning one-time Penn State receiver Juwan Johnson into an NFL tight end? Johnson credits Doyle with teaching him not only technique but also the mindset Johnson needed to adopt to block well enough to stay on the field. Developing Adam Trautman, who’d transitioned to tight end in college and now was making the conceptual leap from FCS ball to the NFL?

“Everything that he told me happened,” Trautman told Yahoo Sports. “Everything he was teaching me, that’s exactly how it was unfolding [from defenses]. So it was like, ‘All right, I can trust this guy.’”

Chris Doyle noticed his son embracing the development of players “that weren’t born on third base.”

Add in a commitment to schematic excellence that drove Doyle to spend summers studying everything from third-down packages to the 49ers’ run game to the Dolphins’ presnap movement, and Doyle felt ready to interview with the Detroit Lions in 2022 when then-coordinator Ben Johnson was hiring a tight ends coach.

Doyle knew: “He’s not going to hire a 25-year-old that is not on it in every aspect.” And while Johnson ended up hiring now-Jets offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand who was 14 years Doyle’s senior for that role, Doyle made enough of an impression on Johnson to earn a coffee meeting at the scouting combine that year.

Periodic communication the next three years followed, Doyle eager to better understand concepts he saw on Lions film as he built a Microsoft Visio file detailing his philosophies on third down, red zone, teaching progressions and more.

After two years as Broncos tight ends coach, Johnson called with more formal interest. Payton was a bit surprised how quickly the coordinator offer came for a coach he jokes may not have yet started shaving. But from a competency standpoint, no one watching Doyle teaching concepts or breaking down game plans was dialed into his age. The Broncos, like Bagent says of the Bears now, would forget how young their far-more-experienced-than-most-his-age coach was.

“When I learned his age, I was like, ‘That makes no sense,’” Trautman said. “It was like, ‘Show me your birth certificate, dude. Because that’s bulls***. Holy crap.”

Bagent’s take on the discrepancy between Doyle’s experience and age?

“Declan has probably been a position coach since he was freaking 15 years old.”

Bears’ vision for Caleb Williams differs from the Jayden Daniels plan

When the Bears overhauled their coaching staff midway through Williams’ rookie year, no one needed to guess the top responsibility of the next hires.

Maximizing the über-talented Williams is imperative. No one doubts Williams’ arm strength nor his knack for off-schedule and out-of-structure plays. But the Bears needed more consistency and efficiency from their quarterback. They needed him to take fewer sacks after Williams absorbed a league-high 68 sacks for a loss of 466 yards as a rookie. And frankly, they needed to support him better.

Doyle leans on the high-level veteran play he saw from Brees in New Orleans and the front-row seat he had to the development of 2024 rookie Bo Nix, who was drafted 11 spots after Williams. Neither is the exact vision in which they seek to shape Williams.

“The vision being: We’re going to achieve whatever his potential is,” Doyle told Yahoo Sports during a May sitdown. “That’s what we’re aiming at.”

“Be me with us,” in-house veteran quarterback Case Keenum describes it, reminding Williams that even if players of Williams’ arm talent can make any play, they’re not going to make every play and thus sometimes need to remember how powerful efficiency can be.

“The guys with so much talent … their biggest strength is sometimes their weakness in that he can make every play in the book, but sometimes there’s some plays where you don’t have to go do all this superhero stuff,” Keenum told Yahoo Sports. “Let’s take what the defense gives you and move on down the road.”

The Bears are developing Williams with an eye on what the coaching staff believes will most threaten defenses rather than just living in Williams’ comfort zone. Williams’ limited action under center last year didn’t deter Johnson and Co. from pushing their quarterback to adopt the formations they believe most hamper defenses. After Williams averaged 5.8 plays per game under center last year, he’s averaging 11.3 this year, per TruMedia data comparing production in and out of shotgun.

And the Bears have leaned much more heavily on 12 personnel this year as a means of shifting looks without shifting personnel. Chicago’s 31.2% of pass plays in 12 personnel is the fifth-highest in the league entering Week 6, per Next Gen Stats. Williams’ success with the concept: 24 of 39 for 266 yards and four touchdowns, tied for most in the league. His 116.0 passer rating while in 12 personnel ranks ninth among qualified quarterbacks.

The ultimate goal: leverage defensive tendencies to the Bears offense’s advantage and create their own tendencies for the purposes of subsequently breaking them.

Take the Bears’ 65-yard, flea-flicker touchdown to rookie receiver Luther Burden III with 4:21 to play vs. the Dallas Cowboys in Week 3.

“We’ll show you a play, we might show you it twice, and then, bam, all of a sudden come back [to the] same setup, same-looking play, and all of a sudden it’s a freaking flea-flicker bomb,” Bagent said. “I’m sure to the defense, that looked like every time that we ran duo [before].”

The Bears will hope the Commanders struggle Monday night to figure out when they’re scheming the same plays to look different and when they’re scheming different plays to look the same.

They’ll know already that their blueprint for developing a 2024 first-round quarterback has diverged from that of the Commanders.

Washington hired former head coach and longtime play-caller Kliff Kingsbury to onboard Daniels last season with a playbook that emphasized not only his dual-threat strengths but also specifically the concepts on which he most succeeded in college. Stability and familiarity powered a dramatic turnaround and NFC championship game berth but is not the only route to success.

After Williams navigated three offensive coordinators in a dysfunctional rookie year, the Bears hope Johnson and his staff will establish the continuity they sorely lacked in 2024. That’s where Doyle comes in to ensure offensive messaging is detailed and consistent even when Johnson isn’t delivering it directly. Johnson expects his players and his coaching staff alike to uphold high standards; they hear from him when they don’t.

Former colleagues including Payton, Campbell, Morton and Trautman expect Doyle will not only reach that standard but help the Bears elevate it. Johnson and Doyle will lean on their tight end coach backgrounds in scheming how to marry the run and the pass all the while maximizing blocking. They’ll aim to continue pairing outside-the-box thinking with meticulous attention to detail with the theory: If Williams understands so precisely what is expected of him, he’ll also understand when he’s permitted to break those rules.

Not unlike the common hiring practice, albeit not rule, that Johnson broke when hiring Doyle. His offensive coordinator lacks the two most common traits first-year head coaches tend to seek in the position: prior work together and experience often as deep as the head coach level, as Johnson obtained in defensive coordinator Dennis Allen.

Doyle isn’t asking anyone to assume Johnson’s bet pays off. But he is excited to prove that — on the practice field, in front of skill players with the clicker and in the win column.

In the meantime, he’ll keep arriving early.

“I think I’d rather be judged by the job that I do than anything else,” Doyle said. “And we’re working on it every day.”