Few areas of the Chicago Bears roster were safe from visible struggle during their 31-7 loss to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. But aside from the play of quarterback Tyson Bagent, there may not have been a more apparent source of woe than what emerged from Jaylon Johnson's performance.
In that game alone, Johnson allowed four receptions on five targets for 106 yards and a touchdown. That averaged out to 26.5 yards per completion allowed with Packers quarterback Jordan Love maintaining a perfect rating (158.3) when targeting Johnson in coverage. What's worse for Johnson, though, is that this isn't an isolated performance but one that has emerged out of a stretch of concerning play from a player considered to be the team's no. 1 cornerback.
Through
the first five games of the season, Johnson has been targeted 23 times. He's allowed completions on 19 of those targets, with opposing receivers going for 354 yards in total. That's a completion percentage of 82.6 and an average gain of 18.6 yards per reception. Opposing quarterbacks have gone for a rating of 133.2 versus Johnson, which puts him in a rather precarious standing among his defensive counterparts throughout the league.
The target and reception volume isn't particularly notable within the broader league context until you start to look at the actual standing among defenders. Johnson's completion percentage allowed is 21st among defenders (1st being the highest allowed in this case). However, only three players higher on that list are actually corners and nobody has a higher target rate than Johnson. Additionally, his total yardage allowed sits at the bottom of the league with that 18.6 average yardage allowed ranking 12th. But, again, the target volume ahead of him on that latter list makes Johnson look worse, with only Indianapolis corner Sauce Gardner matching his target amount within those dozen players. Everyone else is working off a much smaller sample than Johnson.
As if those numbers didn't make it look tough enough for Johnson, there are a couple out of the analytics world that paint an even worse picture.
For one, Johnson's Target EPA — the expected points added for the offense when targeting Johnson, meaning a quality defender would have that figure on the negative side of the threshold — is at +18.0. That's sixth-worst in the league. His catch rate allowed over expected also sits at +17.8 percent, which is 44th-highest on a list that includes 301 defenders.
This is also one of those instances where the Pro Football Focus grade would seem to support both the eye test and what Johnson has laid down on the stat sheet. His overall 42.3 grade checks in at 96th among 104 corners while his 38.8 coverage grade is 97th.
It's an unfortunate development that leads to a natural assumption that Johnson's body simply has not recovered from the groin injury and subsequent core muscle surgery that held him out of action for much of last year. Whether or not that's something that could, at some point, be completely behind him remains to be seen, but the early returns in 2026 have been quite difficult for the Bears to stomach. The numbers leave no doubt as to the struggle that's taking place.
One imagines that teams around the league saw the results from Lambeau and could be gearing up to heave it up regularly against the Bears' no. 1 corner.
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This article originally appeared on Bears Wire: Numbers, in any form, illustrate Bears CB Jaylon Johnson's tough start
