It’s tough to narrow down my favorite Bears team of all time down to only one. Though they haven’t won the Super Bowl since I’ve been alive — and have only appeared in one when I was five years old — there have been a handful of entertaining teams that have been extremely fun to watch.
There’s the 2018 team that won the NFC North on the wings of the best defense in the NFL. The addition of Khalil Mack to a group that already had players like Akiem Hicks, Kyle Fuller, and Eddie Jackson brought that unit
to a supercharged state that was unrivaled by any other team in the league at the time; their PFN Defense Impact ranking of No. 1 in the league backs me up on this. Even though that season ended in the Double Doink, the vibes were high throughout the whole year, and the games were incredibly fun.
Of course, you also have last year’s Bears team. After years of coaching incompetence and subpar quarterback play, watching Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams formulate a competent and efficient offense was such a relief to fans in Chicagoland and around the world. Watching young players like Colston Loveland and Luther Burden III grow throughout the course of the year was so much fun, and as inconsistent as the defense was, their ability to generate turnovers made for some exciting football.
In the end, though, I’m going with the 2006 Bears team that won the NFC. I’m fully aware that I was five years old when they were playing, and naturally, I knew next to nothing about the schematics of football. I wasn’t able to understand much of I was seeing in a way that I can now.
But to me, that’s part of the magic. I didn’t have an ounce of cynicism in me. When Chicago lost games, or whenever someone would make a bad play, I wasn’t mad at the players. I wasn’t mad at the coaches. I was disappointed purely because I wanted to see the Bears win. To me, those players were titans. Every move they made had me awestruck. Because of my youth, I was able to experience that dominant football team with a sense of wonder that I never will be able to again.
The 2006 Bears team is the team that made me fall in love with football. It was the first year I watched every single game, and I instantly fell in love with the sport through that talented team.
Obviously, you have to start with the defense. Brian Urlacher was at his peak, playing at an All-Pro level and cementing himself as one of the greatest linebackers of the 21st century. Lance Briggs was right alongside him, forming the best off-ball linebacker tandem of the decade. Tommie Harris was the Pro Bowl 3-technique that made Lovie Smith’s defense click. Alex Brown and Adewale Ogunleye held it down on the edge, while Mark Anderson came out of nowhere as a fifth-round rookie to finish with 12.0 sacks.
Charles Tillman and Ricky Manning Jr. each finished with five interceptions, while Nathan Vasher added three of his own. Chris Harris was a reliable safety, and though Mike Brown’s season was cut short due to injury, he still made an impact in the six games he was able to play. The rest of the Bears’ defense featured such rotational contributors as Hunter Hillenmeyer, Todd Johnson, Tank Johnson, Alfonso Boone, and Ian Scott. These names that might not ring many bells outside of Chicago are household names to me.
The offense was aided significantly by the special teams output of Devin Hester, who came into the NFL as a rookie and had one of the greatest seasons a return specialist has ever had. He came to the Bears and immediately had five returns for touchdowns, two on kickoffs and three on punts. To this day, I still watch clips of Jeff Joniak’s calls on Hester’s biggest returns. Other special teamers like Robbie Gould, Brad Maynard, Patrick Mannelly, and Brendon Ayanbadejo made major impacts in 2006, too.
As rocky as Rex Grossman was as the Bears’ quarterback, there was something endearing to me about Sexy Rexy as a kid. It helped that he had Thomas Jones to hand the ball off to, with the late Cedric Benson coming in to spell him at times. Muhsin Muhammad, Bernard Berrian, and Desmond Clark formed a respectable group of pass-catching weapons, too. Chicago’s offensive line was the lifeblood that kept the offense running, though; Olin Kreutz and Ruben Brown were playing at Pro Bowl levels, while John Tait, Roberto Garza, and Fred Miller held their own as quality starters. I didn’t realize until now that Tait was the only player on the Bears’ starting offensive line who missed a game in 2006, and he only missed two. Talk about reliability.
Looking at that dominant team through the eyes of a child was what made me a diehard Bears fan, and it’s what birthed my obsession with the game of football. Whenever I go back to watch clips from that season, it further cements what five-year-old me knew: the 2006 team is my favorite Bears team of all time.
