People aren’t sure what to make of the Chicago Bears going into 2024. Up to this point, they’ve been known as a team in rebuild mode, trying to overcome a roster teardown following the ugly Ryan Pace-Matt Nagy era. They started with a 3-14 record in 2022. Things improved somewhat last year, with the Bears reaching 7-10. It feels like this should be the year the franchise starts showing it is a serious playoff contender. Some aren’t ready to make that leap, believing the team is still a year away from being ready.
Much of that has to do with the presence of quarterback Caleb Williams. While they don’t doubt his talent, it is rare for rookies to make the playoffs. Throw in concerns about their pass rusher and interior pass protection, and you can understand the caution. Seth Walder, ESPN’s analytics expert, decided to take the bias out of matters. Using the Football Power Index which represents how many points above or below average a team is, he ran 20,000 simulations of the upcoming season. The results led to a surprising outcome.
Williams leads the Bears to the postseason
The “Hard Knocks” hype was real — rookie quarterback Caleb Williams immediately brought electricity to the Chicago Bears’ offense. Williams finished this season as a top-five fantasy quarterback, and wide receiver DJ Moore exceeded 1,300 receiving yards, helping make up for a defense that couldn’t carry over the momentum it had to end the 2023 season. This resulted in high-scoring, back-and-forth affairs that not only added to Williams’ lore but also generated a 10-7 record that allowed Chicago to sneak into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed in the NFC.
The Bears weren’t a one-and-done team, either. They upset the No. 2-seeded Philadelphia Eagles 23-17 in the wild-card round.
Everybody can still hear the loud thuds of Cody Parkey’s field goal attempt clanging off the goalpost and crossbar. The Double Doink loss to Philadelphia might be the most gutwrenching moment in modern Bears history. It felt like the organization went into a deep funk afterward. Rather than coming together, fractures formed in the locker room. Head coach Matt Nagy fired his offensive staff and worked to replace Mitch Trubisky despite a great year together in 2018. That lack of resilience and the terribly reckless roster decisions they made in the following couple of years is why GM Ryan Poles felt the need to blow everything up.
It would be so fitting if the Chicago Bears returned to the playoffs in 2024 and exorcised their demons by stunning the Eagles in their building. Something like that hasn’t been seen since 1963, when they avenged their NFL championship loss in 1956 to the New York Giants. Williams leading the team to such an outcome would be a hell of a way to start his career. Here’s hoping the simulations are accurate.
