SBNation Dumps Cold Water on 2024 Bears' Expectations

SBNation recently released its list of overrated and underrated teams, and unsurprisingly, the Chicago Bears are firmly entrenched in the "overrated" category.

I say unsurprisingly because, after a summer of love for the Bears, it was only a matter of time before the pendulum swung in the opposite direction for the Monsters of the Midway.

But is their assessment accurate? I take umbrage (Dolores Umbridge?) with a few of their key points and would like to offer an alternate viewpoint that the Bears aren't so much overrated as much as a team on a clear trajectory upwards and looking to build off last year's late-season success.

In order to achieve this, you're hoping Caleb Williams is dramatically better than Justin Fields out of the gate.

This is a curious point since it seems to assert that Justin Fields left anything other than a low bar for Williams to hurdle over. Over the past two seasons, the Bears have led the league with 28 games of fewer than 200 passing yards. 28! Is it unbelievable to believe that Caleb Williams can't come in and immediately eclipse every feeble passing metric left by his predecessor? Lest we forget, Williams isn't some late-round flier with question marks like Kenny Pickett; he's one of the better prospects to come out of college football in the past ten years.

...The reality is that the NFC North plays a much stronger out-of-conference schedule this season against the NFC West and AFC South, which will limit potential wins and the fact that Chicago caught some lucky breaks after their bye weeks as they caught locked playoff teams playing timid football, as well as the Cardinals and Falcons.

This might be the first time I've seen the AFC West implied to be a difficult division to overcome. No team finished with more than ten wins in 2023, and teams like the Colts and Titans are clearly in a state of flux as their quarterback situations remain murky.

Furthermore, hand-waving away the Bears' late-season success is a convenience. They shellacked a Lions team with plenty to still play for and put the clamps on a Vikings team that, at the time, was 6-6 and still eyeing a postseason push.

What I find interesting is the notion that the Packers, and Jordan Love specifically, have done much to establish themselves as the clear-cut favorites. If we're going to discredit the late-season accolades of the Bears, then why not do the same with Jordan Love's strong finish to the season? Love, after all, started the season looking like he was destined for a career in insurance before putting it together at the back half of the season.

The Bears finished 7-10 last season (after starting 1-5), and this is with an offense widely barren of talent and struggling to establish a modern passing attack. An improvement of two games shouldn't be a huge ask, and the NFC wild-card team finished with a 9-8 record last year.

To SBNation's credit, they do frame their article in the context of betting odds; however, Vegas typically tends to have a good feel on the pulse of teams. Last season, the Bears were predicted to win 6.5 games, and this year, the line is at 8.5.

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