CHICAGO -- Game 1 of the Ben Johnson era was supposed to be different for the Chicago Bears, but a sense of déjà vu crept over the nervous crowd at Soldier Field on Monday night.
For the fourth time in the past four seasons, the Bears entered the fourth quarter with a double-digit lead and lost, this time by a 27-24 count to the Minnesota Vikings. How quickly Chicago let a 17-6 lead morph into a 10-point deficit late in its season opener was both confounding and predictable.
Penalties -- 12 of them for 127 yards -- created negative momentum that not even the best play on Johnson's call sheet could overcome.