Bears make it clear: They’re coming for a cool Broncos record

Chicago's 59-point Week 1 eruption puts Ben Johnson's squad on pace to challenge the 2013 Broncos' all-time scoring mark

BY JAKE SHAPIRO

Sep 16, 2026, 3:14 PM

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Ben Johnson is not bluffing and it’s time that Broncos Country watches.

A month ago, when the second-year Bears head coach told The Athletic’s Dan Pompei that he wanted to field the highest-scoring offense in NFL history, most of the football world filed it under the usual training-camp bluster. Coaches say bold things in August. Then September arrives, and reality sets in.

Johnson’s reality on Sunday was 59 points, 560 yards and a franchise scoring output that offensively ranked at the top, even beating the legendary 73-0 annihilation of Washington in the 1940 NFL Championship Game — the most lopsided result the sport has ever seen.

The target? Peyton Manning’s 2013 Denver Broncos, who piled up 606 points across 16 games for the highest-scoring season in league history. Manning threw for 55 touchdowns and 5,477 yards that year, five different Broncos scored at least 10 touchdowns, and Denver averaged 37.9 points per contest. It is, by any measure, one of the coolest records in Denver sports.

Johnson knows the numbers cold — and he can even recite them on the spot.

“You’ve got 31 other teams coming to training camp saying, ‘Our goal is to win the Super Bowl,'” Johnson told Pompei last month. “I want more than that. I want to have the highest-scoring offense ever, which happens to be the 2013 Denver Broncos. I know how many points per game they scored (37.9), and I want to surpass them. I want shutouts. I want blowouts.”

After Carolina, a reporter asked whether that ambition was still alive. Johnson didn’t flinch.

“That will always be the goal,” he said Sunday. “We want to be the highest scoring, we want to have the most wins, we want to win Super Bowls. That’s what we do. We didn’t get into this profession trying to be mediocre or average.”

The Bears now need 34.2 points per game over their remaining 16 contests just to tie Denver’s 606-point total. That’s a steep clip, but Chicago nearly scored that many points in the first half alone on Sunday. But because the NFL expanded to a 17-game schedule, Johnson has zeroed in on the per-game average rather than the raw total: match or beat 37.9 points per game, and the record is his regardless of the extra contest.

Is 59 a game sustainable? Of course not. Manning’s 2013 Broncos had four games of 50-plus points and still settled at 37.9. But what makes Chicago’s pursuit credible is the intent and mind behind it. Johnson has made it clear what his goal is and he’s shown with his work in Detroit and now across Lake Michigan that he’s capable of league-breaking offense. This year, he installed an offense this offseason that specifically targeted second-quarter execution, an area where the Bears ranked 26th a year ago. Sunday’s best-scoring Bears quarter was the second with 17.

Denver’s 2013 record has stood for 13 seasons. Peak Patrick Mahomes didn’t even lead the Chiefs to within 40 points of that. The 2007 Patriots scored 589 before the Broncos eclipsed them. The fifth-best total in NFL history actually comes from the 2024 Lions, going for 564 where Johnson was the offensive coordinator.

One week doesn’t make a season. But one week did make something clear: Ben Johnson is not interested in empty coach-speak. He has a number. He has a plan. And after the largest offensive scoring output in the 107-year history of the Chicago Bears, he has the early receipts to back it up.

The Broncos went to the Super Bowl but were blown out by Seattle. Maybe Johnson is out to prove offense can win a championship and be more emboldened with that idea than even the Broncos were last decade.

John Fox, Adam Gase, Manning and the rest of that 2013 offense might want to keep one eye on Chicago this fall.