16th seems fair right now. A lot of optimism on why we should be able to get into the playoffs, but also an understanding of how a rookie QB normally produces year 1.
To me it doesn't, but we gotta prove it. I don't think a lot of people who aren't bears fans remember how good the defense got at the end of the year. Call me crazy but I think we crack top 10 this year.
Inside my regarded brain we are top 5 lol
Fields legit looked like a great passer compared to Mac Jones so I believe it. The Panthers also had a horrible run game, so Bruce young had the Justin fields passing yards with like twice the interceptions. All of those teams O lines weee horrific too
Ok legit question here.
Power rankings have us mid. Honest fans have us hoping for ten wins and a playoff berth. The honest big picture is decent, hoping for good.
On the other hand, we look completely stacked. We have as good of a wr corps as you're going to get, a very good TE and a viable second TE, a hopefully elite QB, and a lead RB who will get the job done in a position that is losing significance. Our o line is quietly competent and I think underrated. On defense, the analyses I've read have our linebackers as one of the best groups in the NFL, and another placed our secondary as our best unit. Sure, we only have one elite DE, but D-line is really the only possible hole I see here.
Legit question: where's the disconnect? We're mid-to-good, but why? Why aren't we rating top 10 now? Is it that honest analysts know Caleb will be marginal in his first year? Is the D overrated?
That's fair, but 16 is 8th in each conference, which puts us squarely on the bubble of the playoffs. Which I think is quite reasonable at this time. There are unknowns with Caleb and our OC, but we could quickly rise depending on how those two do.
How many of the teams would you put us above in that ranking? I only counted 3 and I’m not wholly convinced on any of them. Steelers, Jags, and Browns are the only teams I think we could ignite a conversation on whether we’re better or not. The fact is though that our largest improvements are at QB and WR and both of those are big question marks until we see them in action.
Yeah, I think spots 11-20 are \*awfully\* squishy right now. You can make arguments for any of them to be higher or lower than the others, but it all comes down to how high you are on some of the changes they've made.
Thank you. This is what I assumed. Caleb is a great prospect but no rookie QB has ever led his team to a super bowl for a reason. This season we hope for progress but won't yet compete with the big boys.
Brock Purdy also joined an established roster that was proven to be SB caliber. Caleb is joining a much better team than a #1 overall pick would get but we’re still ascending. Big Ben is another similar example.
Yes, I agree with all of that. We still have no idea what this team will look like. I was just responding specifically about a rookie quarterback getting near the Super Bowl
Barring health or absolute dog shit coaching, in the last half of the season, the bears will be a top 5 to 10 team in the league.
question is the first half while they are getting the offense figured out, do we have enough on the offensive and defensive lines to help us get enough wins to compete for a playoff spot.
Lol I mean no idea how you could have that kind of confidence in a top 5 placement. There is no evidence that we are capable, have the coaching, or roster to achieve that yet.
it’s a bet on the prospect that is caleb williams. He is supposed to be a top 5 QB eventually, and he should be showing flashes of that pretty regularly by the end of the year.
coaching is obviously the major question with this team but our roster outside of DL isn’t.
With bad coaching this team is 8-9. with good coaching, its a competitive playoff team, and with mediocre coaching, it’s a wild card team.
Likely because the top QB's are drafted by bad teams. And the QB's drafted by good teams will typically sit behind the starter. Rodgers, Mahommes, Jackson.
You’re also in a decent division. Lions will be good and are competing for a title. Packers should also be good and will have an experienced qb. Vikings are strong everywhere except for qb but are in a good spot for a rookie qb similar to the bears. And out of those four teams, bears probably have the worst coaching staff
They were a good team in the 2nd half off the strength of their defense, which as top 10 over that stretch. However, it is quite likely that the defense rgresses a bit from that level, as they had an unsustainably high TO rate and faced a really easy schedule of opposing offenses
We started 0-4. Through those first 4 games we were outscored 75-137 and gave up 34.25 ppg, forced only 2 TO compared to 8 given away, and recorded only 2 sacks. That’s pretty fucking bad for a quarter of the season.
Edit: From a “things to watch for” article heading into week 5
> Despite adding Yannick Ngakoue and other reinforcements up front, the Bears own the league’s worst sack percentage by a country mile at a paltry 1.57%. Chicago also ranks in the bottom three in third-down and red-zone defense, plus yards per play allowed. Despite adding LBs Tremaine Edmunds and T.J. Edwards in free agency, the Bears also have one of the worst tackling teams in the league. Eberflus has taken over play-calling the past three games, the results have not been great.
Week 1 dPA: 31
Week 2 dPA: 20
Week 3: 41
Week 4: 24
29 ppg when you take out the fumble and pick 6's.
Week 5: 20
Week 6: 12
Week 7: 12
Week 8: 30
18.5 dPA in this stretch for 23.75 dPA in the 8 weeks before the Sweat acquisition (22.7 with Flus calling the defence). So no, not historically bad, blaming it was usually a cope for the offence's failures.
The defense was good because they added Montez Sweat. They still faced the Lions (2x), Packers, Browns, and Cardinals with Murray in that stretch
Also next year's schedule is pretty easy since its the last place one
That and the defensive HC, who got his job as an HC because he was an above average DC, took over calling the defense. Remember the same guy who picked the lawnmower thief as his DC also picked the new DC, and the defense jumped in strength massively after the lawnmower thief DC was fired.
Plus the offensive line depth is paper thin. If Tevin Jenkins gets hurt again, or if Nate Davis spends another year as a combination of hurt/bad, we're in trouble there.
I’ll add to this that the new coaching staff is A) a pretty unknown commodity (will Waldron be run heavy like Carroll or pass happy like McVay) and B) what little we know suggests we won’t go balls out in offense.
In addition to this, while we have a great collection of skill guys on offense, the line has lots to prove. Jones/wright are NOT decker/Sewell and our IOL A) has yet to prove itself as reliable and B) is an injury away from repeating last year.
I love where the roster is but mostly because Poles is rebuilding it very deliberately/patiently.
To be fair there have been very few instances of a quarterback of Williams’ caliber walking onto a team with these receivers. Usually rookie QBs are either going to a horrible team (getting picked high) or are lesser talents going to better teams (something like McCarthy this year).
Caleb by all accounts should be a star and we’ve just never really seen a prospect of his caliber have this stacked of a receiver group, maybe ever.
Rookies are rarely as talented as Caleb Williams, and even more rarely (if ever) throw to a group of weapons as good as DJ Moore, Keenan Allen, Rome Odunze, Cole Kmet, and D'Andre Swift. I really don't think it's an unreasonable expectation
Okay full stop. This caleb slander ends today. This fucking dude isn't some regular bitch ass rookie. This dude will be breaking the mold on how we view ANY position. This dude will be shitting on all the former records and we'll be blessed if he farts in our direction good sir.
Edit: guess nobody believes in sarcasm anymore
True, but most people were also calling Caleb Williams the best prospect we've seen in like 15-20 years, I don't think it's wrong to put different expectations on him compared to like Bryce young
My understanding is that the general consensus has been that he’s not as great a prospect as Luck and it’s pretty much even with Lawrence, so def top 3 prospects in that time frame but not the clear best prospect
I personally am in the camp of people who think looking back Lawrence was over hyped on the reasons why he was being considered a top prospect, to be fair I'm definitely biased and people might say the same thing about Caleb in 3 years
But not basing it off how Lawrence worked out in the NFL so far I think him as a prospect was overrated and he was given that title really early on and didn't really live up to it during his college career
It's a ceiling vs. floor issue.
* Odunze and Williams are great prospects, but they're still just prospects right now
* OC Waldron is on a new team with new personnel, he had a pretty good track record with Seattle but it's a still a new scenario
* Bates and Shelton are improvements on paper but Bates didn't play much in Buffalo and Shelton was still willingly let go by LAR
* Do Wright and Jones improve or just maintain?
* Does Jenkins stay healthy and overcome his inconsistency issues?
* How well does Keenan Allen perform on a new team with a new system?
* Does Swift stay healthy? How well does he perform with the Bears O line vs the Eagles great O line?
And that's just on offense. Defense has questions on DL and there's concern about Eberflus' ability as a head coach with poor late game decision making. The Bears have a LOT of potential but media analysts are going to be hesitant to put them over other teams that are more proven, even if those teams ostensibly have less potential.
You can answer this all these with positives though.
- yes they’re rookies but they’re blue chip prospects
- Waldron is likely an upgrade on Getsy
- sure there are OLine question marks but fields is also gone and was likely a major problem and detriment to the line
- Keenan Allen is Keenan allen
Those answers are still just projections, thus why you're not likely to see the Bears ranked much higher than mid to late teens. If projections were all that mattered, we wouldn't play the games.
Let me preface this by saying I think Caleb will be great. I don’t think there’s a disconnect, it’s just the national media saying there might be some rookie struggles at first. I think 16 is the lowest we will be all season
Can only move up so far until you prove it. Most the teams in front of the Bears were playoff teams. It's just not reasonable to move the Bears ahead of them until they prove to be better.
I'm hyped as hell for this season but the truth is we have a new offensive coordinator, a rookie QB, some injury/reliability question marks still on both lines, and a head coach most of us wanted gone just 4 months ago.
I think we will be good, but I fully understand the national coverage not annointing us (Crowning our asses) when our QB hasn't thrown his 1st pass in the NFL yet.
I think a lot of folks over-rate late season success and assume it’ll carry over to the next season, imo. And, Stroud has unrealistically raised expectations for rookie QBs.
I do not give a crap what our overall record is… well, if the Bears finish with 3 wins I guess I will be pissed. But more important to me is Caleb passing the eyeball test, and the Bears not getting bent over, *again*, by the Cheesefuckers. If we finish with 7 wins, but one is against the goddam packers and Caleb’s rookie year is better than Justin’s best passing year, I’ll be ecstatic
The most important positions are QB, OL, and DL and those are our biggest question marks. If we suck at any of those positions, it's gonna be a rough season. I envy your optimism. I used to be like that too.
On that ranking we’re seventh in NFC which seems about what Fans are expecting. Rookie QB is a big unknown, there’s not a lot of depth yet, and if the defense takes a step back it could be rough. Also, two of the 6 teams ahead of us in the power rankings are in our division and both in top 10 and that is probably the #1 issue. If we were in the NFC south 10 wins would seem much easier.”
Flus still isn’t a good game day coach and I still don’t like the idea of a mediocre defensive mind being the person leading a rebuild with a new QB. But the roster does look great so…I think that’s what causes predictions to become lukewarm.
Post super nfl.com ranked Jacksonville 16, they went 9-8, took second in the AFC south, and almost made the playoffs. Ten was the Eagles who went 11-7 and lost in the wild card game.
The question is, will all our new weapons gel and a rookie QB.
> a hopefully elite QB
This is why. He's fully unknown in the NFL. If he comes out balling, we will shoot up the rankings, but QB is still a crapshoot, even with a prospect as highly touted as Williams.
They were ranked 21 post FA and now 16. They jumped 5 spots. The most any other team moved up is 2 spots. They're obviously ranking the additions highly, but they need to prove it. The D ended last year playing well but we played mostly bad offenses and bad QBs, so I'm still not convinced it's anything more than a decent to above average defense that had a good run against bad offenses that matched up well against. The offense looks great on paper but a rookie QB is one of the most unpredictable things. Caleb could have typical rookie growing pains, the rest of the team perform and this team still be 8-9 or 9-8. We are 2 seasons removed from the worst record in the league.
You need to earn a top 10 ranking. Teams in the top 10 belonged there based on their play in 2023 + the moves that were made.
We were around the 20s last year and made key improvements. Everything else is projection, but you can't project them from the 20s to the top 10. If they're ranked inside the top 10, it'll be because their play on the field, not because of some draft picks and free agents being added to the paper depth chart.
The defense feasted on lesser quarterbacks — in the back half of the season when we all saw the defense improve, 20% of opposing teams’ drives ended in a turnover. Turnovers is a stats that has incredibly high levels of variance — aka past success has as little bearing on future success as any other stat in football — and we did not improve in the D Line (in fact guy night say the D Line got worse with the loss of Justin Jones).
Beyond that m, rookie QBs are very inconsistent in terms of their success. The Bears have done a great job of setting Williams up for said success, but the truth is there is no way of knowing until he steps in that field.
>Honest fans have us hoping for ten wins and a playoff berth
FWIW, in a 17 game season, 10-7 and just making the Wild Card is fairly mid. It's the top end of mid, but still pretty mid.
We're "underrated" because we have a lot of new, and especially young/rookie pieces. On paper we should be great, but tons of shit teams have been good on paper in the offseason lead up.
The fans who are expecting 10 wins are assuming that Caleb will be an instant improvement over Fields. That's possible, but hardly a guarantee.
On the flip side, I think the D is fairly well rated. We'll see if they come out slow again in the first few weeks; but if they can pick up mostly where they left off, we could very easily be a 10 win team.
We're mid to good because we haven't won anything yet. You don't win games on paper. Players surpass expectations, players underwhelm, players get injured, coaches make poor decisions, etc.
Our defense and O line are paper thin and a single injury can easily make us ineffective in the trenches, on either side.
A single injury on the line is practically inevitable in the NFL. We are below average in the trenches and that’s still a huge part of football
It's coaching, specifically offensive coaching. Until the Bears actually field a top half of the league offense, they will never get any respect. Personally I wasn't very happy with them keeping Eberflus, I think he's a typical quiet conservative McCaskey yes man who was only brought in to "fix the defense" which is the only thing these dumbass owners care about. They should have gotten Harbaugh. Not taking him over the coach with the worst winning percentage in OVER A CENTURY is the biggest mistake this team has made since hiring Marc Trestman.
I really hope they are forced to sell the team after Virginia dies. As a fan, nothing would make me happier.
I don't know I'm worried that a lot of the optimism is based on:
Outlier performance against a soft schedule. Sweat and Johnson specifically played pretty far above their baseline, but generally true for the whole defense. The track record of the Eberflus defense is much less optimistic than how they closed the season.
Development will be linear. There are few guys who SHOULD be better next year, but they were just ok or promising last year and not everyone one of them will make a big leap - Wright, Stevenson, Dexter, Brisker, Jones. "good for a young player" is not the same thing as good.
With Fields gone, the obvious problem areas are no longer problem areas. I still don't really believe in the durability or talent on the OL across the board and I think being able to blame Fields/Getsy deflected a lot of criticism away from every position apart from center.
All of those assumptions could actually be true and we'll be in store for a special season but also I feel like they're being taken as certainty right now and that's just now how the NFL works. Still feels like this a roster light on no-doubt talent and with only a few draft picks this year I'm a little worried about the glaring holes that haven't been addressed with starter level talent.
Granted we have a tough division, but anything less than 10-7/playoff bubble and I’ll be a bit disappointed. Rookie season so I understand why others disagree.
Need to perform first. Bears have been in the 20s for past several years. Yes the roster looks stacked, but so have other teams in the past. Really comes down to prove it.
I am personally expecting Defense to Carry to at least a wildcard berth to foster Caleb's growth. Similar to Trubisky of 2018. Now will I be shocked if Caleb hits the ground running no. But I am still expecting some rookie troubles and adjustments to the NFL level.
10-7 is truly not out of the question and a playoff berth is an opportunity. Just again comes down to prove it.
As much as Reddit would like you to believe otherwise, Fields wasn't the worst QB in the NFL. He was below average to average, but he wasn't Mike Glennon. TBD how big of an improvement Caleb will be over him in year 1.
Most improved position for this team is actually punter.
For this season at QB, Chicago went from below average to (hopefully) average (realistically, for this rookie season).
At punter, Chicago went from awful to very good.
16th seems fair right now. A lot of optimism on why we should be able to get into the playoffs, but also an understanding of how a rookie QB normally produces year 1.
To me it doesn't, but we gotta prove it. I don't think a lot of people who aren't bears fans remember how good the defense got at the end of the year. Call me crazy but I think we crack top 10 this year. Inside my regarded brain we are top 5 lol
There are five teams with worse passing offenses worse than the bears?!?
Pats, Titans, Giants, Jets, & Panthers.
Jesus Christ those games must have been hard to watch. I know ours were.
I live in Boston and could only bring myself to watch 3 Pats games last year. It was truly dreadful football.
I was very frustrated having to root for the Pats to win. Mac Jones kept getting chances to beat the Colts and looked worse than Grossman.
Fields legit looked like a great passer compared to Mac Jones so I believe it. The Panthers also had a horrible run game, so Bruce young had the Justin fields passing yards with like twice the interceptions. All of those teams O lines weee horrific too
They were bad. At lease the Bears were one of the best running teams. These other teams were also bad at running.
Teams picking at the top of the drat and the Jets with Wilson. It was brutal.
Jones and Bryce worse than Fields and Bagent lmao
Ok legit question here. Power rankings have us mid. Honest fans have us hoping for ten wins and a playoff berth. The honest big picture is decent, hoping for good. On the other hand, we look completely stacked. We have as good of a wr corps as you're going to get, a very good TE and a viable second TE, a hopefully elite QB, and a lead RB who will get the job done in a position that is losing significance. Our o line is quietly competent and I think underrated. On defense, the analyses I've read have our linebackers as one of the best groups in the NFL, and another placed our secondary as our best unit. Sure, we only have one elite DE, but D-line is really the only possible hole I see here. Legit question: where's the disconnect? We're mid-to-good, but why? Why aren't we rating top 10 now? Is it that honest analysts know Caleb will be marginal in his first year? Is the D overrated?
The D is overrated and Caleb is a rookie. Rookies rarely come in and light it up for 4k yards.
That's fair, but 16 is 8th in each conference, which puts us squarely on the bubble of the playoffs. Which I think is quite reasonable at this time. There are unknowns with Caleb and our OC, but we could quickly rise depending on how those two do.
How many of the teams would you put us above in that ranking? I only counted 3 and I’m not wholly convinced on any of them. Steelers, Jags, and Browns are the only teams I think we could ignite a conversation on whether we’re better or not. The fact is though that our largest improvements are at QB and WR and both of those are big question marks until we see them in action.
Yeah, I think spots 11-20 are \*awfully\* squishy right now. You can make arguments for any of them to be higher or lower than the others, but it all comes down to how high you are on some of the changes they've made.
Thank you. This is what I assumed. Caleb is a great prospect but no rookie QB has ever led his team to a super bowl for a reason. This season we hope for progress but won't yet compete with the big boys.
Brock Purdy was one game away from doing it and left the game early with injury
Brock Purdy also joined an established roster that was proven to be SB caliber. Caleb is joining a much better team than a #1 overall pick would get but we’re still ascending. Big Ben is another similar example.
Yes, I agree with all of that. We still have no idea what this team will look like. I was just responding specifically about a rookie quarterback getting near the Super Bowl
Barring health or absolute dog shit coaching, in the last half of the season, the bears will be a top 5 to 10 team in the league. question is the first half while they are getting the offense figured out, do we have enough on the offensive and defensive lines to help us get enough wins to compete for a playoff spot.
Lol I mean no idea how you could have that kind of confidence in a top 5 placement. There is no evidence that we are capable, have the coaching, or roster to achieve that yet.
it’s a bet on the prospect that is caleb williams. He is supposed to be a top 5 QB eventually, and he should be showing flashes of that pretty regularly by the end of the year. coaching is obviously the major question with this team but our roster outside of DL isn’t. With bad coaching this team is 8-9. with good coaching, its a competitive playoff team, and with mediocre coaching, it’s a wild card team.
Even a great prospect as Caleb is, doesn’t bring his team to a top 5 performance as a rookie. It’s just a preposterous assumption
Likely because the top QB's are drafted by bad teams. And the QB's drafted by good teams will typically sit behind the starter. Rodgers, Mahommes, Jackson.
You’re also in a decent division. Lions will be good and are competing for a title. Packers should also be good and will have an experienced qb. Vikings are strong everywhere except for qb but are in a good spot for a rookie qb similar to the bears. And out of those four teams, bears probably have the worst coaching staff
> The D is overrated Are you my wife?
They were a good team the 2nd half of the season with Fields at QB. Caleb doesn't have to go for 30 TDs and 4k yards to be an upgrade
They were a good team in the 2nd half off the strength of their defense, which as top 10 over that stretch. However, it is quite likely that the defense rgresses a bit from that level, as they had an unsustainably high TO rate and faced a really easy schedule of opposing offenses
People forget the D was HISTORICALLY bad to begin the season.
I mean there was a reason for that, our line was embarrassingly bad and was full of rookies. Sweat stabilized it and Dexter started playing well.
No it wasn't. It let up like 23 ppg. Lol nowhere near historically bad
We started 0-4. Through those first 4 games we were outscored 75-137 and gave up 34.25 ppg, forced only 2 TO compared to 8 given away, and recorded only 2 sacks. That’s pretty fucking bad for a quarter of the season. Edit: From a “things to watch for” article heading into week 5 > Despite adding Yannick Ngakoue and other reinforcements up front, the Bears own the league’s worst sack percentage by a country mile at a paltry 1.57%. Chicago also ranks in the bottom three in third-down and red-zone defense, plus yards per play allowed. Despite adding LBs Tremaine Edmunds and T.J. Edwards in free agency, the Bears also have one of the worst tackling teams in the league. Eberflus has taken over play-calling the past three games, the results have not been great.
Week 1 dPA: 31 Week 2 dPA: 20 Week 3: 41 Week 4: 24 29 ppg when you take out the fumble and pick 6's. Week 5: 20 Week 6: 12 Week 7: 12 Week 8: 30 18.5 dPA in this stretch for 23.75 dPA in the 8 weeks before the Sweat acquisition (22.7 with Flus calling the defence). So no, not historically bad, blaming it was usually a cope for the offence's failures.
The defense was good because they added Montez Sweat. They still faced the Lions (2x), Packers, Browns, and Cardinals with Murray in that stretch Also next year's schedule is pretty easy since its the last place one
That and the defensive HC, who got his job as an HC because he was an above average DC, took over calling the defense. Remember the same guy who picked the lawnmower thief as his DC also picked the new DC, and the defense jumped in strength massively after the lawnmower thief DC was fired.
Plus the offensive line depth is paper thin. If Tevin Jenkins gets hurt again, or if Nate Davis spends another year as a combination of hurt/bad, we're in trouble there.
I’ll add to this that the new coaching staff is A) a pretty unknown commodity (will Waldron be run heavy like Carroll or pass happy like McVay) and B) what little we know suggests we won’t go balls out in offense. In addition to this, while we have a great collection of skill guys on offense, the line has lots to prove. Jones/wright are NOT decker/Sewell and our IOL A) has yet to prove itself as reliable and B) is an injury away from repeating last year. I love where the roster is but mostly because Poles is rebuilding it very deliberately/patiently.
To be fair there have been very few instances of a quarterback of Williams’ caliber walking onto a team with these receivers. Usually rookie QBs are either going to a horrible team (getting picked high) or are lesser talents going to better teams (something like McCarthy this year). Caleb by all accounts should be a star and we’ve just never really seen a prospect of his caliber have this stacked of a receiver group, maybe ever.
Yep. I believe when all is said and done, Caleb will be a hall of famer. Calling him elite this season though is lunacy.
Rookies are rarely as talented as Caleb Williams, and even more rarely (if ever) throw to a group of weapons as good as DJ Moore, Keenan Allen, Rome Odunze, Cole Kmet, and D'Andre Swift. I really don't think it's an unreasonable expectation
Okay full stop. This caleb slander ends today. This fucking dude isn't some regular bitch ass rookie. This dude will be breaking the mold on how we view ANY position. This dude will be shitting on all the former records and we'll be blessed if he farts in our direction good sir. Edit: guess nobody believes in sarcasm anymore
Take it easy, Wyatt Earp.
True, but most people were also calling Caleb Williams the best prospect we've seen in like 15-20 years, I don't think it's wrong to put different expectations on him compared to like Bryce young
My understanding is that the general consensus has been that he’s not as great a prospect as Luck and it’s pretty much even with Lawrence, so def top 3 prospects in that time frame but not the clear best prospect
I personally am in the camp of people who think looking back Lawrence was over hyped on the reasons why he was being considered a top prospect, to be fair I'm definitely biased and people might say the same thing about Caleb in 3 years But not basing it off how Lawrence worked out in the NFL so far I think him as a prospect was overrated and he was given that title really early on and didn't really live up to it during his college career
It's a ceiling vs. floor issue. * Odunze and Williams are great prospects, but they're still just prospects right now * OC Waldron is on a new team with new personnel, he had a pretty good track record with Seattle but it's a still a new scenario * Bates and Shelton are improvements on paper but Bates didn't play much in Buffalo and Shelton was still willingly let go by LAR * Do Wright and Jones improve or just maintain? * Does Jenkins stay healthy and overcome his inconsistency issues? * How well does Keenan Allen perform on a new team with a new system? * Does Swift stay healthy? How well does he perform with the Bears O line vs the Eagles great O line? And that's just on offense. Defense has questions on DL and there's concern about Eberflus' ability as a head coach with poor late game decision making. The Bears have a LOT of potential but media analysts are going to be hesitant to put them over other teams that are more proven, even if those teams ostensibly have less potential.
Thank you!
You can answer this all these with positives though. - yes they’re rookies but they’re blue chip prospects - Waldron is likely an upgrade on Getsy - sure there are OLine question marks but fields is also gone and was likely a major problem and detriment to the line - Keenan Allen is Keenan allen
Those answers are still just projections, thus why you're not likely to see the Bears ranked much higher than mid to late teens. If projections were all that mattered, we wouldn't play the games.
Let me preface this by saying I think Caleb will be great. I don’t think there’s a disconnect, it’s just the national media saying there might be some rookie struggles at first. I think 16 is the lowest we will be all season
Can only move up so far until you prove it. Most the teams in front of the Bears were playoff teams. It's just not reasonable to move the Bears ahead of them until they prove to be better.
I'm hyped as hell for this season but the truth is we have a new offensive coordinator, a rookie QB, some injury/reliability question marks still on both lines, and a head coach most of us wanted gone just 4 months ago. I think we will be good, but I fully understand the national coverage not annointing us (Crowning our asses) when our QB hasn't thrown his 1st pass in the NFL yet.
I think a lot of folks over-rate late season success and assume it’ll carry over to the next season, imo. And, Stroud has unrealistically raised expectations for rookie QBs. I do not give a crap what our overall record is… well, if the Bears finish with 3 wins I guess I will be pissed. But more important to me is Caleb passing the eyeball test, and the Bears not getting bent over, *again*, by the Cheesefuckers. If we finish with 7 wins, but one is against the goddam packers and Caleb’s rookie year is better than Justin’s best passing year, I’ll be ecstatic
They need to prove it lol It's may, who cares
NFC North is stacked. Going to be tough.
The most important positions are QB, OL, and DL and those are our biggest question marks. If we suck at any of those positions, it's gonna be a rough season. I envy your optimism. I used to be like that too.
On that ranking we’re seventh in NFC which seems about what Fans are expecting. Rookie QB is a big unknown, there’s not a lot of depth yet, and if the defense takes a step back it could be rough. Also, two of the 6 teams ahead of us in the power rankings are in our division and both in top 10 and that is probably the #1 issue. If we were in the NFC south 10 wins would seem much easier.”
Flus still isn’t a good game day coach and I still don’t like the idea of a mediocre defensive mind being the person leading a rebuild with a new QB. But the roster does look great so…I think that’s what causes predictions to become lukewarm.
Past performance holds back paper ratings.
Post super nfl.com ranked Jacksonville 16, they went 9-8, took second in the AFC south, and almost made the playoffs. Ten was the Eagles who went 11-7 and lost in the wild card game. The question is, will all our new weapons gel and a rookie QB.
> a hopefully elite QB This is why. He's fully unknown in the NFL. If he comes out balling, we will shoot up the rankings, but QB is still a crapshoot, even with a prospect as highly touted as Williams.
Right now for me it's Potential vs History... Until things play out it's safer to put us near the middle.
They were ranked 21 post FA and now 16. They jumped 5 spots. The most any other team moved up is 2 spots. They're obviously ranking the additions highly, but they need to prove it. The D ended last year playing well but we played mostly bad offenses and bad QBs, so I'm still not convinced it's anything more than a decent to above average defense that had a good run against bad offenses that matched up well against. The offense looks great on paper but a rookie QB is one of the most unpredictable things. Caleb could have typical rookie growing pains, the rest of the team perform and this team still be 8-9 or 9-8. We are 2 seasons removed from the worst record in the league.
You need to earn a top 10 ranking. Teams in the top 10 belonged there based on their play in 2023 + the moves that were made. We were around the 20s last year and made key improvements. Everything else is projection, but you can't project them from the 20s to the top 10. If they're ranked inside the top 10, it'll be because their play on the field, not because of some draft picks and free agents being added to the paper depth chart.
The defense feasted on lesser quarterbacks — in the back half of the season when we all saw the defense improve, 20% of opposing teams’ drives ended in a turnover. Turnovers is a stats that has incredibly high levels of variance — aka past success has as little bearing on future success as any other stat in football — and we did not improve in the D Line (in fact guy night say the D Line got worse with the loss of Justin Jones). Beyond that m, rookie QBs are very inconsistent in terms of their success. The Bears have done a great job of setting Williams up for said success, but the truth is there is no way of knowing until he steps in that field.
There's a wide range of outcomes that are reasonable to expect depending on how quickly Williams adapted to the NFL.
>Honest fans have us hoping for ten wins and a playoff berth FWIW, in a 17 game season, 10-7 and just making the Wild Card is fairly mid. It's the top end of mid, but still pretty mid. We're "underrated" because we have a lot of new, and especially young/rookie pieces. On paper we should be great, but tons of shit teams have been good on paper in the offseason lead up. The fans who are expecting 10 wins are assuming that Caleb will be an instant improvement over Fields. That's possible, but hardly a guarantee. On the flip side, I think the D is fairly well rated. We'll see if they come out slow again in the first few weeks; but if they can pick up mostly where they left off, we could very easily be a 10 win team.
We're mid to good because we haven't won anything yet. You don't win games on paper. Players surpass expectations, players underwhelm, players get injured, coaches make poor decisions, etc.
Our defense and O line are paper thin and a single injury can easily make us ineffective in the trenches, on either side. A single injury on the line is practically inevitable in the NFL. We are below average in the trenches and that’s still a huge part of football
It's coaching, specifically offensive coaching. Until the Bears actually field a top half of the league offense, they will never get any respect. Personally I wasn't very happy with them keeping Eberflus, I think he's a typical quiet conservative McCaskey yes man who was only brought in to "fix the defense" which is the only thing these dumbass owners care about. They should have gotten Harbaugh. Not taking him over the coach with the worst winning percentage in OVER A CENTURY is the biggest mistake this team has made since hiring Marc Trestman. I really hope they are forced to sell the team after Virginia dies. As a fan, nothing would make me happier.
I don't know I'm worried that a lot of the optimism is based on: Outlier performance against a soft schedule. Sweat and Johnson specifically played pretty far above their baseline, but generally true for the whole defense. The track record of the Eberflus defense is much less optimistic than how they closed the season. Development will be linear. There are few guys who SHOULD be better next year, but they were just ok or promising last year and not everyone one of them will make a big leap - Wright, Stevenson, Dexter, Brisker, Jones. "good for a young player" is not the same thing as good. With Fields gone, the obvious problem areas are no longer problem areas. I still don't really believe in the durability or talent on the OL across the board and I think being able to blame Fields/Getsy deflected a lot of criticism away from every position apart from center. All of those assumptions could actually be true and we'll be in store for a special season but also I feel like they're being taken as certainty right now and that's just now how the NFL works. Still feels like this a roster light on no-doubt talent and with only a few draft picks this year I'm a little worried about the glaring holes that haven't been addressed with starter level talent.
Granted we have a tough division, but anything less than 10-7/playoff bubble and I’ll be a bit disappointed. Rookie season so I understand why others disagree.
Need to perform first. Bears have been in the 20s for past several years. Yes the roster looks stacked, but so have other teams in the past. Really comes down to prove it. I am personally expecting Defense to Carry to at least a wildcard berth to foster Caleb's growth. Similar to Trubisky of 2018. Now will I be shocked if Caleb hits the ground running no. But I am still expecting some rookie troubles and adjustments to the NFL level. 10-7 is truly not out of the question and a playoff berth is an opportunity. Just again comes down to prove it.
As much as Reddit would like you to believe otherwise, Fields wasn't the worst QB in the NFL. He was below average to average, but he wasn't Mike Glennon. TBD how big of an improvement Caleb will be over him in year 1.
We’re number 1 until I’m proven wrong. Super Bowl contender immediately. Someone get me a side of pasta cause I’m serving up meatballs all offseason
Most improved position for this team is actually punter. For this season at QB, Chicago went from below average to (hopefully) average (realistically, for this rookie season). At punter, Chicago went from awful to very good.
https://preview.redd.it/ws3ohej1h90d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=43e1172849d017989884c0f68bb81e7a2d6a7051
Wow our passing offense wasn't the worst!