The Bears are Back

It is with great joy that I inform you: The Bears are awesome.

Good

11-6, off a division title and nearly appearing in the NFC Championship game; the Bears return all key components to this team. Ben Johnson, Caleb Williams, Darnell Wright, Joe Thuney, Colston Loveland and Montez Sweat all return. That’s a pretty great place to start.

The haters will point to the roster losses such as:

DJ Moore: Last seen quitting on a route that decided the season then getting dumped because the best offensive coach he’s ever had knew what he was all about.

Kevin Byard: Still trying to catch up to Jameson Williams

Tremaine Edmunds: A bad football player

Jaquan Brisker: Another bad football player

Nahshon Wright: A bad football player who managed to catch a couple of JJ McCarthy passes.

Gervon Dexter: Another bad football player.

You get my point. They lost guys the same way you lose a skin tag. The whole narrative this offseason was “hurka derka da bears are loosing der hole defense my frent!” Good! Their defense was terrible! Replace everybody!

But what about left tackle!?! Ahhhhhhhh. I totally forgot about that. They’re screwed. They going to have to survive with Braxton Jones and Theo Benedet until Ozzy Trapilo is ready. There is no precedent for that. Except last year when they had to do the exact same thing.

Yeah but what about the schedule? What about it? The division is not going to be particularly daunting this year with the Vikings hoping Kyler Murray suddenly becomes something other than Kyler Murray. The Lions continue to decline another year away from Ben Johnson. The Packers keep making a play for the illustrious seven seed. Every other schedule metric doesn’t really matter. It’s whether the division is good. And it’s really not.

They’ll try to poke all the holes they can. They’re going to regress just like the 2024 Commanders. Except the Bears coach is a genius and the Commanders coach is the 28-3 guy. Except the Bears have young, ascending skill talent everywhere and the Commanders entered last year with the oldest roster in football. Except the Bears have an ascending quarterback who has never missed a start and the Commanders have a 140 pound scramble merchant who still sucks his mommy’s breastmilk.

Better

The defense is definitely where any Bears skepticism comes into play. It’s true they lost a lot and in terms of splashy additions, they didn’t make many. The one they made, Coby Bryant, is already out until December (he’ll be back by Thanksgiving, go ahead and mark that one down). But again, it cannot be stated enough that this defense was an abortion covered in vomit. And it’s true, they didn’t get Maxx Crosby which has caused numerous aneurysms across the Bears Media Sphere. That’s because most people are too simple to understand that improvement doesn’t always mean achieving elite status. Put it this way, if your car used to catch on fire any time you turned the key and now it only makes an annoying sound while you drive it, that’s improvement correct?

The plan ultimately isn’t particularly difficult to understand:

They were very bad against the run last year. It wasn’t the pass rush that made their defense so bad, it was that they got gashed on the ground which even a cursory knowledge of football will tell you is the foundation of any offensive gameplan. They got rid of one of their worst run defenders in Gervon Dexter replaced him with Neville Gallimore. I know, that doesn’t sound like it matters but using Ben Johnson’s favorite word, “details” it really does.

Dexter ranked 220^th in EPA per rush out of 315 defensive lineman, Gallimore ranked 110. Then they replaced Andrew Billings who was 142^nd among defensive linemen in EPA with Kentavius Street who was 62^nd.

No one is mistaking these two guys for All Pros but they’re replacing bad players. The jump from terrible to mildly competent is huge. That’s the goal.

The cascading effect of this will be what helps the pass rush. Teams can’t run as much forcing them into more obvious passing downs, allowing for more blitzes, etc. A jump even into the top 20 in total defense from 27^th a year ago is a complete game changer. They’re absolutely better. Are they good? Eh. But that’s all relative because the offense is going to make people beg for their mama.

Best

If the growth from terrible to mildly competent is the goal on defense then growth from good to great is the expectation from the offensive. And what exactly would make you think that’s not going to happen?

Ben Johnson’s first year as playcaller in Detroit: 3^rd in total yards, 3^rd in points scored.

Ben Johnson’s second year as playcaller in Detroit: 3^rd in total yards, 2^nd in points scored.

Ben Johnson’s third year as playcaller in Detroit: 2^nd in total yards, 1^st in points.

That’s year over year improvement from a level where the previous standard was already elite. This guy isn’t a one hit wonder, he’s not a product of good players, he’s the best offensive coach in football. Full stop.

Last year with the Bears, they finished: 6^th in yards and 9^th in points. That was an improvement from 32^nd in yards and 25^th in points from 2024. He’s been given one of the most gifted QBs on the planet and in year one, just sorta messing around, he turned an awful unit into a good one. Good to great is a stretch? No, all the data indicates it should be the expectation.

So in summation, the Bears replaced bad players with ones who aren’t bad. They will play the same version of the schedule they played last year where they won 11 games. And they bear very little resemblance to any team the pundits are trying to paint them as. The reason they hate the Bears is because they see the Bears coming. They see Caleb about to wrap his painted nails around their throat while Ben Johnson snorts Adderall off his playsheet and dunks Matt LaFleur in the toilet. Hold on to your butts.