I picked the 2024 Chicago Bears to win eleven games.
Spoiler alert: the 2024 Chicago Bears are not likely to win eleven games.
That is not to say this cannot be a good season, or even a very good season. It can. The Bears have a defense that will keep them in every single game; they have been borderline incoherent offensively through three weeks and are still a play or two away from being 3-0. Teams in this league are separated by inches, not yards, and the Bears will be improving incrementally as the campaign continues. They can absolutely still be playing relevant football deep into December and competing for one of those wildcard spots.
But there were a few “givens” heading into this season that have not materialized, namely the team’s ability to run the ball and consistently stop the run. The latter is less of a concern. Defenses face undeserved scrutiny when their offenses don’t score enough points. The former, however, is a five-alarm fire. Why can’t they run the ball? Sure, the Bears currently have liabilities at center and right guard, but they also had those liabilities in 2023. The other three starting offensive linemen are exactly the same, but Darnell Wright, Teven Jenkins and Braxton Jones are all performing way below expectations. Is it a performance issue? Is it opposing scheme? Is it simply a group struggling to implement a new system? Hello? Can anyone hear me?
And it seems the Bears themselves have been shocked by this development. You don’t call four runs, including an insane college option on 4th and goal at the one, unless you think you’re a running team. After Sunday in Indy, the Bears are now hopefully well aware of their changed identity. They can’t run the ball. But it seems they sure can toss it around.
This season is all about Caleb Williams and that running game was the primary reason many of us believed he’d have one of the easiest transitions to the NFL in years. Without it, we see games like Sunday, games where he’s being asked to throw the football more than 50 times. And what we saw in Indianapolis was Caleb doing the things supremely talented rookies do when they’re asked to throw the football that much, preparing a pigskin paella of electric moments, befuddling errors, and plenty of flavors that leave us wanting to come back for more. This is likely to be a very good season because of Caleb, who now projects to throw for more 3,500 yards in his rookie campaign. But the hope was he’d be a complementary asset as a rookie and that hope is quickly dwindling as the Bears sit 30th in the league in rushing.
It is still early. My 11-win prediction broke down as 4-2 in NFC North, 2-2 splits with the NFC West and AFC south, and a sweep of the three last place opponents, New England, Carolina, and Washington. I’m not ready to dramatically alter that, with the exception of Minnesota and Sam Darnold looking way better than I had expected. The Bears have three more games before the bye, and that bye week will be their next opportunity to make wholesale changes with personnel and scheme. If they can be 3-3 heading into that break, the season is still right in front of them.
But if the team doesn’t solve their problems in the run game, they’re going to be asking an awful lot from their rookie quarterback. That’ll be a lot of fun to watch, but it also requires slight alterations of seasonal expectations. Asking a rookie quarterback to win you eleven without help is asking too much.