When and where: Week 3 in Chicago, Monday Night Football
Key additions:
C Garrett Bradbury, S Coby Bryant, LB Devin Bush, DT Neville GallimoreKey subtractions: WR DJ Moore, LB Tremaine Edmunds, S Kevin Byard, S Jaquan Brisker, CB Nashon Wright
Last season: A new, offensive minded head coach and a high draft pick QB he inherited won the NFC North, just like when Matt Nagy and Mitchell Trubisky did it in 2018
The question for this team: Can the Bears defy gravity?
The Bears had four straight seasons of
double digit losses from 2021 to 2024, then went 11-6 in 2025. Teams that have that kind of bounce tend to fall back down the next year. That they had a new head coach and won a playoff game doesn’t give them waterproofing, the 2024 Commanders, 2022 Giants, and 2022 Jaguars are recent examples of teams with new head coaches who went from horrible to a playoff win and then right back to irrelevance the next season.
There’s an obvious major regression coming. The 2025 Bears defense led the league with 33 takeaways, including a league leading 23 interceptions, which is another way of saying that the 2025 Bears defense was incredibly lucky. Even with those stoppages, they still finished 23rd in scoring, 29th in yards, 25th in completion percentage, 28th in yards per attempt, 28th in TD%, 20th in sack rate, 22nd in pressure rate, 24th in QB hits, 29th in rushing yards per attempt, 22nd on 3rd down, 15th in the red zone…. takeaway the takeaways and this defense was garbage, it had nothing to lean on when it couldn’t get the ball.
The Bears did make some key changes, the top four defenders in snaps played all left in free agency. But none of their imports were transforming additions, and none of them address their pass rushing woes. Are some new faces in the secondary and a presumably healthier team going to be enough to negate the drop off in takeaways?
On offense, Caleb Williams needs to play better. His hero ball moments were exciting, and his fantasy football numbers were solid: 7th in yards, 6th in TDs with 388 yards and 3 TDs as a runner.
But he completed just 58.1% of his passes, half a percentage point ahead of JJ McCarthy for 32nd out of 33 qualified QBs. He was 21st in yards per attempt, and having the 4th best sack rate in 2025 is unsustainable for his style of play. He had just six games with a completion percentage in the 60s, and half of them were the first three games of the season. In two playoff games he threw five interceptions, and barely completed half his passes.
The Bears pathway to repeating as a playoff team, possibly even NFC North champs again, feels pretty easy: Caleb Williams takes a big step in year two under Ben Johnson. Their pathway to going right back to out of contention by Thanksgiving also feels pretty easy: the defense can’t stop anyone and the offense continues to rely on unsustainable hero ball moments, and they aren’t there.
