Bears have something to prove to the entire NFL and they’re making sure everyone gets a message that is impossible to ignore
The Chicago Bears were picked by many “experts” to be the top regression candidate in the NFL in 2026, now the team is off to a 6-2 start including back-to-back wins against the 2025 Super Bowl teams.
The Chicago Bears are coming off another statement game that sent shockwaves across the entire NFL on Monday night. The Bears walked into the defending Super Bowl champs’ home and walked out with a 34-17 win. And the way in which they won that game was even more impressive.
It was a full team effort yet again for this team. The kind of regular season win you see from teams that become eventual Super Bowl champions. That’s the standard now for this team and it’s not about sending a message, either.
“We’re still early on in the season in a lot of regards,” head coach Ben Johnson said after the game. “We’re not even halfway yet. I think we’re in a good spot. We’re still getting better in a lot of areas, there’s a lot of places we can get better at as well – which we’ll do and look at in depth over the (Week 10) bye week. We’re just focused every week on how do we get 1-0 for the next week. Once we get into December and January, we’ll start worrying about big picture stuff, but we got to continue to improve.”
So much for all the regression talk about the Chicago Bears
Remember over the summer how everyone talked about this team? How every win the Bears had was fluky in 2025 and unsustainable? How the Bears were primed to be the top regression candidate in the NFL? How about how the Bears had the hardest strength of schedule in the entire league (which by the way isn’t a real thing)?
Yeah, well, now the Bears are 6-2 on the season and 4-1 with Caleb Williams at quarterback. This offense has scored 30+ points in three straight games since Williams returned and the defense looked like a different unit with Jeffery Simmons, and will be getting more and more pieces back as the season goes on.
To really put things into perspective, OptaSTATS shared on Monday night that the Bears are now the first team in NFL history to beat both Super Bowl participants from the previous season in primetime in back-to-back games, and one of those was on the road in one of the toughest environments in the sport. How’s that for regression?
“That’s who we want to be known as,” Williams said. “We’re also a force to be reckoned with. They just won a Super Bowl last year, they just got a bunch of guys back, that’s a worthy opponent on all sides of the ball – offense, defense, special teams. They got All-Pro guys, they got a bunch of talent over there. We knew it was going to be a challenge, we knew it was going to be a dog fight. We knew that our identity had to show up for us, and I think it did today.”
Ever since all of the regression and strength of schedule talk started, the Bears made it known that they weren’t going to blink. The message was, send your best and watch what happens.
“So called the hardest schedule, we had the hardest last year so, we’re excited,” Williams said back in June. “We don’t back down from no challenge. We want everybody to know that going to the playoffs and things like that are in our future. It’s going to be a consistent thing for us. Obviously, we gotta do the right things to put ourselves in those positions. Starts now and finishes in February. We’re excited about all of the opportunities coming up.”
Through eight games, the Bears have not blinked. The two losses this team has suffered came during a monsoon-weather game in which Williams was injured and a divisional game on the road with a backup QB. The other six the Bears have won, and won handedly. This team is legit and only getting better. People need to recognize that.
“When the pressure’s high, we want to be at our best. And all three phases did that,” Johnson added. “We didn’t come here to make a statement, we’re still building.”
