The Chicago Bears rewarded their fifth-year cornerback, Jaylon Johnson, with a contract extension this past offseason, and he has made sure to show that he is living up to expectations.
In his first year under the new deal, Johnson made his second consecutive Pro Bowl.
The 2024 season is one that many Chicago Bears fans are looking to forget and it is hard to make the case that any player improved from their 2023 campaign. The case can be made that Johnson is no different.
Jaylon Johnson is the Chicago Bears' lone 2025 Pro-Bowler
Johnson is coming from a season in 2023 where he was named to the first-team All-Pro, so there was room for him to decline a bit in play and still maintain his status as one of the four best cornerbacks in the NFC, which is exactly what happened. While his yards allowed went up and his plays on the ball went down, you can still argue that he was not only top four, but the best cornerback in the NFC. The drop-off is more of a testament to how well he played in 2023, not how far he fell back down to reality in 2024.
Johnson will start across from Byron Murphy, who is making his first Pro Bowl. The other two NFC cornerbacks who made it were Jaycee Horn and Devon Witherspoon. Johnson certainly has a longer track record than all of these cornerbacks now, and while the competition was fiercer in the AFC, we can still proclaim that Johnson may have dropped from the best cornerback in the NFL to still maintaining his status in the top five. It will be interesting to see if he can still make it to the All-Pro team, which would mark the second year in which he has accomplished that feat.
With the issues that Tyrique Stevenson had going on this season, teams looked to avoid Johnson if they could, and that led to Johnson seeing teams shy away from him. Still, he has just one less target thrown his way this year compared to the year prior, and his per-target numbers are still up there with some of the best in the NFL.
With two straight Pro Bowls and a potential second straight All-Pro season coming Bears fans have to be excited about where his play can go from here, as he has yet to hit his prime. If the pieces around him start to improve quarterbacks will be forced to go his way, and the ball skills may flash more in the future.