After veteran Case Keenum lit up the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night, the overarching conversation in Chicago this week was about who the Chicago Bears would start at quarterback as Caleb Williams continues to recover from a hamstring injury. On the first play of the game against the New York Jets on Sunday, Bears head coach Ben Johnson made it clear he had heard every last tidbit from this discussion tailor-made for sports talk radio
.And he decided to troll everyone by starting Keenum at quarterback while also starting Bagent at receiver. In effect, both quarterbacks "started" the game before Bagent took over full-time duties for, quite literally, the rest of the afternoon. When Fox NFL reporter Kristina Pink asked Johnson at halftime
about having both Bagent and Keenum on the field at the same time for the first play, he confirmed what everyone else thought with a straight face.
It was, indeed, a "ceremonial first pitch" and an obvious troll job about the meaningless "starting" discussion from the Bears' mastermind coach:
Ben Johnson asked about Case Keenum and Tyson Bagent being on the field for the first play of the game.
— ✶ MarcusD ✶ (@marcusd.bsky.social) 2026-10-04T18:55:28.245Z
In all honesty, Johnson did make an important point here. The technical definition of starting refers to being on the field for the first play of the game for your side of the ball. So, both Bagent and Keenum got starts, albeit at different positions in the formation. The more important detail here is who is running the offense afterward, and that was Bagent. Case closed (no pun intended).
Of course, as noted, this is just a technicality. Johnson certainly understands what people generally mean when talking about starting players, and he used that to make a little joke at the expense of everyone running with a Chicago quarterback "controversy."
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Ben Johnson had an amusing clarification about starting Tyson Bagent and Case Keenum
