Two of the very best minds in football will be squaring off this week when the Chicago Bears host the Minnesota Vikings.

Those two minds are Bears head coach Ben Johnson and Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores, who will be locked in a chess match as one tries to outduel the other.

Johnson and the Bears are coming off a game in which he showed his offensive genius en route to an avalanche of points, and 59, to be exact.

Meanwhile, the Vikings had some struggles early in the win over the Green Bay Packers, but Minnesota put the clamps on Green Bay late in the game and the Vikings ended up blowing out the Packers with a huge helping hand from Flores' unit.

Ahead of the Bears-Vikings showdown on Sunday, Johnson was asked if he's on the seemingly torturous path of overthinking and trying to guess what Flores is going to do and whatnot.

Johnson admitted that he indeed is.

"When you face someone like Brian Flores, not only is he very accomplished but someone you have faced so many times, is there ever a trap to avoid of just overthinking and trying to guess what he thinks you think he thinks you think he thinks you’re gonna do?” a reporter asked.

"Yeah, yeah. Yes, there is," Johnson said with a smile.

"How do you avoid going down a path where you're just overdoing it?" the reported followed up.

"I'm in that path right now," Johnson with a laugh. "There's a lot of that. End of the day, our guys, I want them to go out and play fast. I want to make sure we're sound... making sure we have a hat for a hat as often as we can. And if (Flores) gets us on something then that's fine. We gotta come together and make sure we get it corrected and we'll move on from there."

Of course, Flores and Johnson are no strangers to one another, as they have been in the same division since 2023, when Flores was hired as the Vikings' defensive coordinator and Johnson was offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions still.

One thing the Bears will have to contend with is Flores' tendency to switch things up when it comes to blitzing. As ESPN's Courtney Cronin noted, Flores blitzed at nearly twice the rate in the second game against the Bears last season as he did in the first.

Johnson said that isn't something you can necessarily game plan for, and it makes preparing for the contest that much more difficult.

"You don't. You try to have answers for everything ... you'd like to think he's put everything he could possibly do on tape until you play him next and you realize he hasn't yet. So it'll be something new. There always is with him and that's what makes him such a good coordinator. It's a great challenge. It really is. You have a lot of fun on game day. Now the week of preparation is not so much fun, but you know, there's a lot of back and forth that goes into it," Johnson said.

It's very clear Johnson has the utmost respect for Flores, and that respect is definitely mutual.

“It’s a major challenge, and that’s what we all signed up for," Flores said of the Bears' offense.

As if a divisional matchup wasn't enough to create excitement for this game, the fact that two brilliant minds on opposite sides of the ball will duel it out only makes it more interesting.