The difficult task facing Caleb Williams and the Bears this season can best be seen in a set of numbers meant more for gambling purposes than it can be by looking at statistics or a 2026 strength of schedule based on last year’s win totals.
Pro Football Focus has released its win total projections for the coming season and in those the Bears’ plight is entirely clear. Their win total projection from PFF is 9.13. The story also provides a consensus number from bookies at 9.5 wins.
This seems like a safe number that could go either way, but the figure actually doesn’t reveal much. What does tell the tale of this difficult season ahead is Minnesota is 8.41, Green Bay 9.92 and Detroit 10.61. All of the NFC North teams are bunched into a box within 2.2 wins of each other.
This isn’t as tightly bunched as the NFC South, where all four teams are within 1.31 of each other. However, none of those four teams are even given projections for .500 records. In the NFC North, only Minnesota is projected below .500, and barely.
The NFC, and particularly the NFC North, is a weekly war. It might not be the projected three-team bunch in the league’s elite group like the NFC West is, but those NFC West powers have the Arizona Cardinals to count on for two easy wins. There are no easy touches in the NFC North.
The Bears found this out last year by winning two divisional games while still winning the title.
It’s relatively easy to go through and find 10 wins for the Bears on this year’s schedule, especially if they merely go 3-3 in their division. The Jets, Panthers, Falcons, Buccaneers, Saints, and Dolphins all struggled to some extent or other last year, although the Panthers did come in the best of a poor lot in the NFC South.
The Bears, with merely a 3-3 record in the division and wins over the teams who struggled last year would need only a win over Jacksonville or Philadelphia to get to 10. Or maybe they could upset either of the Super Bowl teams to get one more win.
It’s not an impossible scenario, but the level of their competition on a week-to-week basis in the NFC North leaves them little room for error outside the division. Also, 10 wins might not be enough for the playoffs in an NFC that looks stronger on balance than the AFC.
After that there is the difficult matter of those elite teams in the NFC West in the playoffs.
Things change quickly in the league, though. Seattle was projected by PFF at eight wins last year and won it all. The 49ers were projected the previous year for double-digit wins and won six.
Whatever way it’s sliced, and whether it’s by analytics sites, bookies or just fans, the Bears face a real challenge doing anything similar to last year. Then again, as Seattle showed, it’s always possible to wildly outperform expectations.
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