Some people are fans of the Chicago Bears. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Chicago Bears. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your Team: The Chicago Bears, who are not yet the Hammond, Indiana, Bears
Your 2025 record: 11-6, a staggering outlier for a franchise far more comfortable with 6-11. A new coach, a repaired and better protected quarterback, and the next big running game. We were comfortable with the Bears being persistently mediocre, and now we have to deal with the possibility that they could own the NFC North for more than one year, which they haven't done since 2006, when Rex Grossman roamed the earth.
Your coach: Ben Johnson, who is not the sprinter or the late actor but the most anonymously named coach since ... well, Arthur Smith. Until we find out what his real name is, he is the latest in a series of attractive menu items collectively described as "young quarterback-whispering guru." He took the most quarterback-averse franchise in the entire NFL and in one year turned someone else's draft pick into a positive weapon by introducing a concept that has benefitted more NFL quarterbacks than any other: the running game.
Johnson made his bones first in Miami as the man who made Ryan Tannehill a plus performer, and then went to Detroit to do the same for Jared Goff under Dan Campbell. Upon relocating to Chi...uhh, Hamm—actually let's just say the Chicago Metro Area he straightened out the persistently deficient Bears offense by redesigning it to preserve its quarterback by letting him hand the ball off to other people. The result was Chicago's fifth top 10 offense in the last 30 years, and explained why Johnson was the hot new dude in the coaching world. But since nothing ages faster than new, he now has to do it again, which is something the Bears haven't done since Walter Payton was taking those handoffs. This requires that A) his best players stay healthy, B) his offensive line remains elite, and C) that other coaches don't catch on to his brain, which is unlikely given the number of people and resources being applied by the other teams the Bears will play this year. Hey, people thought Matt Nagy and Matt Eberflus were geniuses too, until more recent data came to light, starting with the idea that coaches named Matt are not to be fully trusted.
Your quarterback: That's Caleb Williams, the first pick in the 2024 draft and a player who spent his first season learning that Bears quarterbacks are just ex-Bears quarterbacks who don't know it yet. In his shambolic rookie campaign, Williams helped hasten the end of the Eberflus Era (46 games being an era for purposes of this discussion) by having the unmitigated nerve to get sacked 68 times, tied for the third highest total in NFL history and matched only by David Carr, Randall Cunningham, and David Carr. The experience helped convince the Bears that if they wanted their pick not to be road-kill, they needed to figure out how to keep him upright. And they did, reducing his liability to 24 sacks. Williams responded to this diminished threat to his safety by becoming a more efficient operator without spiking any of his raw numbers.
Williams is still barely ordinary in dropback situations, but a second year under Johnson and a new offensive coordinator in Press Taylor may fix that. Then again, the Bears might revert to being the historical Bears. The other danger, of course, is that running quarterbacks tend to have a shorter shelf life, which is why Johnson made sure not to increase his exposure to mayhem. The worry used to be, "How can he be more useful than, say, C.J. Stroud or Geno Smith, just to name two of the 85 men who have thrown for more yards in a season?" It is now, "How do we make sure that he doesn't get beaten stupid by homicidal edge rushers or psychopathic free safeties?" Williams really could become the first Bears quarterback to ever throw for 4,000 yards in a season, even though the organization hates quarterbacks as a fundamental raison d'être. He'll have to break a significantly ingrained habit to make them a team with genuine winning habits. His backups are not important, and if they become important things will have gone very wrong.
What’s new that sucks: Their fascination with Hammond, which used to be their fascination with Arlington Heights, which used to be a fixation on a new stadium in Chicago paid for by other people. The Bears have two potential and aptly named new stadium sites in Hammond, the Wolf Lake Terminal and Lost Marsh, because, clumsy oafs that they are, they actually have no idea where to go or why it would be better, except that, once again, they won't have to pay for it. While this is just the latest symptom of the thing that makes the McCaskeys the McCaskeys, it's not new. It's just them trying to fear-monger with Northwest Indiana rather than, say, deciding to just go back to the future and return to their original home in Decatur, three hours and 2,660,000 people away. That's when George Halas, the last football-knowledgeable member of the family, started his pro football career; he remains the only sensible role model these bucket-headed dolts can invoke to justify their continued ownership of this team. But until the new NBA-franchise-flip fixation hits the NFL, Bears fans can only hope that ownership will be no better at seizing Lost Marsh than they were when they were looking at stadium sites in Hooterville.
What has always sucked: Their ability to put together a football team that endures the vagaries of parity. The team's track record at stringing together successive winning records can be summed up as follows: two times since Mike Ditka was coach, and none since 2007. Since then, the Bears have a worse aggregate record than Arizona, which is as condemnatory as saying, "We're trying to model ourselves after the Jets." Last year gave Bears fans something they had grown accustomed to living without—hope—but sustaining it has just been something that other people get to have.
The other "always has sucked" part of this franchise is the idea that the passing game is something one should want to have. They made the second great quarterback in NFL history in Sid Luckman, but he's been out of football for 76 years now and departed our three-dimensional universe 28 years ago. The fact that they haven't replaced him with anything better defies all logic even if you try to drop the "he just played against plumbers" argument that marks you as an un-evolved turd in an empty punchbowl. The truth is, the Bears have largely done two things since World War II: lose, and when they don't lose, win with a great running back and a greater defense. Last year's defense was 23rd in points allowed and 29th in yards allowed, so ... well, if you buy a house in Hammond today, you can charge $16,000 to let people park in your driveway in five, 10, or never years.
What might not suck: Johnson, probably. Williams, clearly. RBs D'Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai, and TE Colston Loveland, with any luck. The voters of Hammond saying, "You'll get our money the minute you find a wide receiver who can lead the league in yards, and until then, stop soiling our towels." (The last Bear wideout to do that was Johnny Morris in 1964, back when they had things called flankers.) What we're saying is, while they stopped sucking for the moment, the Bears must prove to you that they can keep doing so despite the metric tonnage of their history. But 11-6 is still better than 6-11 no matter how many ways you find to question it. Enjoy this until the start of the season, then you can worry about history.
HEAR IT FROM BEARS FANS!
Sean:
With Caleb being on the cover of Madden 27, this means either of 2 things:
1. He’ll trip over the carpet at Halas Hall during OTA’s and his spine will splinter into 10 pieces.
2. He’ll revert to being Justin Fields, running around looking for hero throws whilst ignoring wide open receivers.I’m sure George McCaskey is probably a nice guy, but I wouldn’t trust him to make a ham sandwich let alone run a multi-billion franchise.
Wesley:
I was in college when RG3 was popping off. I was arguing with a friend who’s a Packers fan and I slipped and said “RG 3 has more touch downs than interceptions that’s fucking crazy” (the real stat was that at one point RG3 has more touchdowns then incompletions). He laughed and said yeah dumb ass that’s what QBs are supposed to do. That’s what being a bears fan did to me and my understanding of QB play. Having said that I’m fully Caleb pilled. Bring on the ice man, 21-3, FTP!
Nick:
The McCaskeys are billionaires on paper, millionaires in reality, and third-generation dipshit nepo babies who have no fucking clue how to run a business in practice.
On any given Sunday, approximately four-fifths of Soldier Field is an interception away from calling Caleb Williams the N and F words. The only mystery is which is the noun and which is the adjective.
Brian Urlacher is a MAGA fuckhead with dumb hair.
Ben Johnson doesn't know what's in store for him.
Luke:
We are the only franchise in the year of our lord 2026 still treating a 4,000-yard passer like it’s a mythological creature. Other teams have two of them on the roster by accident. We treat 240 passing yards like someone just cured polio.
Regarding the playoff loss to the Rams: A broken Roomba stuck in a corner would have generated more pressure than our d-line. Watching this fanbase decide DJ Moore was the reason we lost is when I realized we deserve to lose this team to an industrial slag heap that makes Gary, Indiana look like the Hamptons.
Bob:
The team's Wikipedia page boasts that last year Caleb Williams became the first Bears quarterback to pass for 3,900 yards in a season, the exact kind of non-accomplishment that their fans will jerk off to for a decade.
Gadi:
Bears finally have a joyous season and maybe are in the cusp of being a contender, so what's the dominant story of the summer? Idiot failson owners and an incompetent team president threatening to move across the state line onto a Superfund site in Indiana because Illinois won't give them the requested tax breaks and then keep bumping the "final" deadline when Illinois keeps calling the Bears' bluff. At this point I want them to move, if only because the McCaskeys would be the first pro owners to completely blow the sports/entertainment complex grift.
Troy:
Have you ever been in a social circle where two of the pettiest and most insufferable people start flirting a bit? Maybe you root for them to start a relationship because at least then their negativity will be directed at each other? They won't inflict themselves on other people as much, and deserve the misery they put on each other? That is how I feel about the Chicago* Bears and the state of Indiana.
Sean:
The Bears actually have good vibes for the first time since the Lovie Smith era. Their coach seems like he’s competent at worst, and generational at best. The same can be said about their QB for the first and only time since I’ve been alive (I’m uncomfortably close to 50). They have young talent all over the field, particularly on offense, and just finished a season where they handed the Packers two consecutive kick-in-the-nuts losses in a row. Things are good!
So what do you do if you’re the failson loser who inherited control of the organization and his MBA-brained team president? Stay the course and reward loyal fans for their continued dedication to a team that’s been an NFL bottom-feeder for the past 30 years? Hell, no! You leverage one (one!) season of respectability into a ham-fisted threat to move the franchise to a toxic waste dump in NW Indiana because the state of Illinois won’t sign off on a plan to let you legally cheat on your property taxes. George McCaskey and Kevin Warren have elevated parade pissing to an art form. I hate them both like poison.
Michael:
Rooting for the Bears means you root for a team run by a family who behave like they're in Succession except they're all Arrested Development characters. Incompetent, unserious, and in completely over their heads. They ruined a national historic landmark more than twenty years ago, and clearly the number one priority for the McCaskey family since then has been trying to get Chicago and Illinois to be dumb enough to give them money to try again.
But because we're *finally* wise to them, they decide they're gonna entertain moving to Indiana.
It's really incredible. It's the first unapologetically fun season in almost a decade since the Double Doink and the McCaskey family decides NOW is the perfect time to ruin the fun and remind us all that just like they wrestled the team from the Halas side of the family, they're gonna wrestle the team from Chicago.
Nothing is sacred to them.
Jeremy:
What do you get when you combine the most incompetent ownership and executive group in the NFL with the most incompetent local politicians in America? You get the Chicago Bears building a stadium atop a toxic waste dump in Indiana.
Although let's be real, who knows if they ever actually build a stadium at all. They've had approximately two dozen official team announcements about the stadium since Kevin Warren was hired as team president, and exactly zero shovels in the ground. Mind you, this is the guy who negotiated a massive TV rights deal for the Big Ten, then bailed for the NFL before the details were finalized and left his predecessors holding the bag. I fully expect him to do the same thing with the Bears; he'll get confirmation on moving the NFL's oldest franchise into a nuclear reactor, then bail before shovels are in the ground and take a job in the Trump administration or something.
Jason:
Look, we know how this will end, okay? Bears fandom is a never ending cycle of crushed hopes and dreams that no “new offensive focus” or “coaches who understand there is a play clock” will ever resolve. Years ago in a time that fewer and fewer Bears fans remember thanks to old age and massive cholesterol consumption, Willie Gault signed a pact with Satan to produce a terrible music video and now we all must live in the hell that has unleashed which includes getting decimated twice a year by a rival team from a city that doesn’t even have a real fucking airport.
Andrew:
I’ve written in few times to this column to give periodic updates about my dad and I’s relationship, as he was the man who got me into being a Bears fan and also disowned me, thus ruining my life twice. Well, dear readers, I have yet another update. Around March 2025, my father texted me out of the blue to ask me if I was willing to give our relationship another try. He’s 60 now, and I’m approaching my 30s, and he came at me with enough honesty and openness that I was willing to give it a shot. He made a good point that life is short and that the days are getting shorter and blah blah blah. I told him I’d be willing to try, but we would have to go through some sort of counseling or therapy in order to really work and repair this relationship. Keep in mind, this man set me up with a fake therapist when I was 12, who I thought was a real one but was just a guy who would take what I said and tell it all to my father. So I told my dad I would need to approve the therapist we saw if he found one, which he agrees to. I left this conversation feeling somewhat hopeful and ready for a clean start. Fast forward to July 2025, and I have not heard from my dad since this talk. In a drunken fit of annoyance, I texted my dad and said “Clearly you don’t care enough to actually work on this,” which he replied “Yep. Didn’t seem like you were actually willing to work on things” all because I set my boundaries. I blocked him and haven’t heard from him since.
So yeah, the Bears and my dad were basically twin flames this year. Moments of hope (a winning team and a modern offense/therapy) that ended in disappointment (DJ Moore’s dumbass route running/ my dad being a piece of shit).
Tim:
This team/franchise can't even get the stadium situation right. Can't find a suitable site in the city, buys land in the suburbs, and as much as I want them to stay in the city, they could easily build in Arlington Heights. Right now. But because they want tax breaks, and because fans are tired of paying for stadiums for billionaires and millionaires, they screwed that up. Couldn't read the public or the politicians.
They bleeped the curse words on Hard Knocks.
Yes, Caleb is very good and might end up being great. But we still have to see the "Bears bad QB list" from now until the end of time.
They had too many games where I was spiraling and sending negative texts to the group thread in the second or third quarter, and they ended up winning.
Ben Johnson is a good coach but possibly insane.
I don't know if the defense can do what it did in 2025.
The interception that cost them the playoff game against the Rams took away te goodwill from that insane game-tying TD.
Even if they'd held onto the ball against the Rams and moved on, they'd have been boat-raced by Seattle.
I will never forgive the team and city for what they did to Soldier Field, and now that I live in the city proper instead of my homeland of the suburbs, my taxes are paying for it. Over 20 years later.
Bears fans are still morons who pine for the linebackers and running backs of yesteryear, and they'll turn tail on Caleb after just one bad game. They all have bad Chicago accents and bad mustaches.
"The Bear" was great TV, but didn't use Jon Bernthal enough. And please, no more Chicago shows that show characters driving north on Lake Shore Dr. when they said they're heading to Naperville. It's the wrong direction!
They're doing a Chicago Bears Hallmark movie!
I'm still not over breaking my glasses from throwing them at the TV after a Bears loss when I was 8.
I was so sure Justin Fields was it.
Chris Conte still sucks.
Brian:
As promised last year, I did indeed go to the Bears vs. Browns game in December. My very first NFL game. My aunt grew up in Ohio as a Browns fan, and was with me. The hotel we stayed at ended up on an "I Tested One Star Hotels" YouTube video this year. The Uber to get to a popular Asian grocery store a mile down the road was $35. I did not buy a $13.50 Butterbeer at the Harry Potter store, but I did buy a $15 Affogato at the Starbucks Brewery next door. I lost an additional $250 at the Bally's Temple.
The only 3 Browns points were scored while we were getting expensive sausages and not looking. I read on the internet that getting a personal pizza is the play, so you can use the box as a cold guard. Got back to the seats only to discover the pizza is not a whole personal, but a single slice slightly larger than usual, as if this was New York. It was gone in four bites. The cardboard didn't help.
It was so biting cold in the stadium as the lake winds funneled in like the Devil's Roomba, that by halftime I was ready to hike to Wrigleyville and overpay for drinks at the Xmas pop up bars there. Instead, I stuffed some HotHands pouches in my shoes, which migrated to my toes, feeling like coals as we trudged up Lake Shore Drive to the far off Uber area past the museum and well away from the stadium. Along the way, my Bears lucha mask must have fallen out of my coat. I'd like to think D'Andre Swift found it and uses it to sneak to his car, not being able to see no one's waiting anymore.
Despite it all, kind of fun. Memorable. I guess it's sort of like the Bears themselves. For every terrible kick, you get a bunch of drunks trying to recreate it on an icy street for a middling prize. For every 8-10 seasons of sheer disappointment, you get one where they lead the division, smite their rivals in the playoffs, and then just deliver a heartbreaker like we're used to. Glory is the ultimate heater, but familiarity is still a warm blanket, no matter how many holes are in it. I've had very few perfect days in my life, but I remember them so fondly. I can't help but wonder if the rich man, the famous man, the royal man, the Patriots man, the Chiefs man ... if eventually they just have an endless sea of days.
And what if they move to Hammond? What if they become a perfectly cromulent team going 9-7 every year, getting to print an extra playoff shirt that ends up at Wolff's Flea Market? What would I put in this entry? That deep dish pizza is just a chestbursted calzone? That I would pay $399 to NOT go to Lollapalooza? Or how Chicago traffic is truly way super duper worse than any other city?
In addition to RC Cola, Soldier Field also offers Dr. Pepper, 7Up, and Canada Dry. I got a Sunkist. Two thirds of it froze to undrinkability.
Adam:
I'm sorry, what? I can't hear you over our TWO WINS AGAINST THE PACKERS IN THE SAME FUCKING YEARRRRRR!!!!! GREEN BAY SUCKS! GREEN BAY SUCKS!!!
This. This is why the Bears suck. Unironically, we think that having one good season and twice beating an injured-to-hell Packers squad at home is enough for us to be thinking of buying flights to LA for the Super Bowl.
And even though I know this team and the innumerable ways that it's fucked up the one-car funeral that is their new stadium project, I actually believe they are not a fluke, not a one-year wonder, and will stuff the ball down the entire league's throats one by one next season.
No amount of reality will uncloud my judgment. Kevin Warren can sell Bob in Downers Grove the lie that this team will actually move to a toxic waste dump in Hammond, Indiana before their lease at Soldier Field is up, and I KNOW that it's bullshit, but do you think I'm gonna let that get in the way of dancing on Green Bay's not-quite-dead body, Drew?!?!? FUCK NO!!!!!
We're gonna go to Carolina, then go home, probably lose half our secondary to explosive diarrhea thanks to RFK Jr., win like 8 games at best, and STILL think we're Super Bowl bound so long as Caleb keeps uncorking bullshit Prime A-A-Ron backfoot heaves like in the playoffs.
It's happening! We're finally back, baby!!!!! GO BEARS!!!!!!!!!
In all seriousness though, Dennis Green was right, especially if you apply his words to the stadium debacle. The Bears are who we thought they were: A geriatric franchise run by the failsons of a faildaughter who don't know the first thing about business nor even the basics of the college sport their patriarch built into a professional conglomerate.
They've lucked out so far with Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams, but I know you and every other fanbase in the North are waiting for them to go Sideshow Bob in that field of rakes again. Don't worry, it'll probably happen in such a shitastic fashion that will make the lettuce diarrhea look like a wet fart in the wind.
Sam:
I'm a lifelong Bears fan (millennial variety) raised on '85 highlights despite being born after any type of success. Here's why the Bears suck:
Watching Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton in 2006 was a disgrace to football in the era of the forward pass.
This team is about to fall back down to earth so hard, they'll be able build their stupid domed stadium in the crater they make in the greater Chicagoland area, hopefully in the city, probably near Mount Prospect. Parking will be expensive and impossible to find.
The defense sucked last year and they're about to take a major step back this season. I will find comfort in a recognizable 6-11 Bears team I've come to know so well.
Fuck Kevin Warren. He was brought into get the Bears a new stadium deal and is learning that naviagting Chicago politics is much more difficult than stifling 20-year-olds from starting a union. But hey, he gets a pity game ball each season and spews some bullshit about Jesus to get the boys fired up!
Going 2-1 against the Packers last year will be the highlight of the Ben Jonhson era, and ownership will ride it like the wave of '85 to justify they next decade of mediocrity.
I hate that I care about this team, and I hate that I'm hoping some sort of sustained success while already knowing the impossibility of such a thing. That's insanity. That's Bears fandom.
Bryan:
The McCaskeys are taking all the goodwill from last season and burning it through the dumbest stadium scam of all time. Oh, you're asking a bunch of Chicago politicians to pay for your team to move out of Chicago? This would take the most precise diplomatic skills and political acumen from a well ran franchise and the Bears instead have the NFL Hapsburgs
Ben Johnson looks like the generic model for a create-a-player from a PS4 game called Office Softball 2026.
After the Bears kept winning games at the last minute last season, I said I would convert to Catholicism (from atheism) if the Bears won the Super Bowl, and I'm pretty sure I meant it.
The Pope clearly doesn't give a shit about football and clearly hates getting jerseys.
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