Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, we focus on Bears running back D’Andre Swift, who has blown up in Ben Johnson’s run concepts over Chicago’s last two games. Johnson may have a new Sonic and Hedgehog in Swift and rookie Kyle Monangai.
Obviously, when the Chicago Bears hired Ben Johnson to be their new head coach, the main reason
was Johnson’s radical success with Jared Goff in Detroit when Johnson was the Detroit Lions’ offensive coordinator, and the hope that Johnson could perform the same miracles with Caleb Williams.
That process is still in progress, but when I used to watch the Lions and the Ben Johnson offense, I had as much or more fun watching the run game as the aerial show. As a run designer, Johnson will throw anything and everything at you, and with David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs, he had the perfect Thunder and Lightning (or in their case, Sonic and Hedgehog) duo to make it all go.
It took a second for the Bears to get the hang of those run concepts, but over the last two games — wins over the Washington Commanders and New Orleans Saints that took the Bears to 4-2 on the season — veteran D’Andre Swift has been the NFL’s second-most productive running back behind only Rico Dowdle of the Carolina Panthers, another Secret Superstar. In that stretch, Swift has 232 rushing yards and a touchdown on 33 carries for a 7.0 yards-per-carry average, three forced missed tackles, and five runs of 15 or more yards.
Johnson and Swift have worked together, of course — the Lions selected Swift in the second round of the 2020 draft out of Georgia, and Johnson became the Lions’ offensive coordinator in 2022, Swift’s final season in Detroit before the Philadelphia Eagles traded for him in 2023. Swift gained over 1,000 yards and made the Pro Bowl at (Jeff) Stoutland University, which had the Bears signing him to a three-year, $24 million contract with $14 million guaranteed on March 13, 2024.
Anyhoo, back to the Ben Johnson run game, and Swift’s role in it. In both 2022 and 2025, Swift was/is Johnson’s designated headbanger in gap and outside zone concepts, and it’s pretty easy to overlay the fit.
“Yeah, so I was with Swifty when we first drafted him in Detroit a number of years ago, and I followed his career even after he left Detroit,“ Johnson, who was the Lions’ tight ends coach in 2020, said at the 2025 scouting combine. ”I think very highly of him. He’s an explosive athlete. There’s a number of things that he can do both in the running game and the passing game. I do think he can help ignite an offense because he’s got that playmaking ability. So it’ll be fun to start to work together again here this springtime with him.”
That said, in the first five weeks of the season, Swift gained just 187 yards and scored two rushing touchdowns on 56 carries for a 3.3 yards per carry, seven forced missed tackles, and one run of 15 or more yards. The transformation in the last two games has been quite something.
“I think we’ve been pretty consistent with that message, that it was just going to take a little bit of time to get our O-line on the same page and feel good about their fits and their combinations, and I think that’s starting to come together,” Johnson said of the overall rushing attack after the Saints game. “You accumulate the reps over the course of camp and through these first five games, going into the sixth one here, and I think you really see it start to come to life a little bit. Credit to them.
“I feel really good — they’re really well-coached. [Offensive Line Coach] Dan Roushar, [Assistant Offensive Line Coach] Kyle DeVan, they do tremendous jobs and they’ve been very consistent with that crew. It’s a prideful group. Obviously, they want to protect the quarterback in the passing game and they want to be able to run for 200 every week in the running game. Really proud of what that looked like today.”
When asked whether he was happy that Swift has been rewarded with increased production for his “head-down effort,” Johnson pointed to both Swift and the entire picture.
“I think that’s all of our guys. You just keep going back to work. When things go your way, you go back to work, and when things are hard, you go back to work. That’s really the answer for everything, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do as a team. But to your point, Swift has done a great job here these last two weeks. We’re at the point of the season now where no one feels 100 percent anymore, and that’s what it’s going to be the rest of the way. None of those guys feel great. Their bodies don’t feel good. Yet you still show up and you find a way to be there for your teammate next to you, and Swift certainly exemplifies that.”
Swift agreed that everything is just working better now.
“We are clicking up front, and the receivers are doing a great job on the perimeter,” he said Sunday. “Hats off to them, the guys up front and the receivers, I can’t say that enough. If they do their jobs up front and we get a little space as the backs, everybody in our room, we’re going to make something happen after that. I feel like we’ve been doing a better job this week and the past week of clicking on all cylinders and doing our jobs.”
The system isn’t just helping Swift; it’s also working for seventh-round rookie Kyle Monangai from Rutgers, who caught my attention pre-draft, and had a career day against the Saints with 81 rushing yards and a touchdown on 13 carries.
With this type of run game, the Bears can take their time with Williams’ development and still win games. That level of balance helped Goff redefine his career, and it appears to work just as well in the Windy City as it does in the Motor City.
