Assessing ESPN's Ranking of the Chicago Bears' Roster
Despite a playoff run under Ben Johnson last season, the Chicago Bears' starting lineups land in the middle in league-wide rankings. Discover why a stagnant pass rush and defensive departures overshadow Caleb Williams' ascending offense.
Video Transcript
What's going on everybody?
Nicholas Morgiano here from Bears Roundtable Sports.
For today's video, we look into a recent article from ESPN that ranked every single team's starting lineups one to 32 and think back what the Bears did last year.
Won 11 games, the NFC North, won a playoff game against the Green Bay Packers, and took the Los Angeles Rams into overtime last season.
Ben Johnson established a explosive offense.
The defense led the league in takeaways.
If you were to think about all those accomplishments that the Bears did last season and think about their roster, their starting lineups going into this year, you would think the Bears would be regarded as one of the better teams.
Well, ESPN had them ranked at number 17 in the NFL.
And the thing about this is, the more I looked at the 16 teams that are ahead of them, the more difficult I found trying to place the Bears ahead of one of those teams.
The one roster though, the one starting lineup that I looked at that I believe was just ranked way too high is the New England Patriots at number seven.
And when I looked at their starting lineup compared to the Bears, I could see where the Bears fall short in some areas, but also exceed in others.
But the other teams that are just ahead of the Chicago Bears, you have the Jacksonville Jaguars that are at number 16.
You have number 15, the Cincinnati Bengals, and I get maybe some people are thinking about the Bengals like, "How are they that much better than the Bears two slots ahead?"
Well, you have Joe Burrow, you have the wide receivers, you upgrade the defensive line with Dexter Lawrence, you have Jonathan Allen.
I, I just think that there are, there are teams that have better players at more premium positions.
And where the Bears ultimately fall short compared to their peers is on the pass rush.
Out of the 16 teams that are ranked ahead of the Chicago Bears, only the New England Patriots and the Bears have the biggest weakness on the roster according to ESPN being the pass rush.
But unlike the Bears, the New England Patriots at least did something to upgrade that pass rush by bringing in new players like Harold Landry III from Tennessee and Dre'Mont Jones.
The Bears are essentially running it back with the same unit that they have and hoping that they produce better results in 2026.
But this is a list in the summertime that ultimately can mean nothing if the Bears go out and perform, because football is the ultimate team game.
Everybody's heard that phrase before, and you can have a stacked roster that can not, not meet the expectations that you would think just looking on paper.
So the Bears have great coaches.
The Bears do have good football players at important positions, and now what this team needs to do going into the 2026 season is execute.
A lot like what they did in 2025, but at even more efficient rate.
If they can do that, who cares where they're ranked at number 17 in terms of best starting lineups?
Which, like I said, I believe is fair based on the teams that are ahead of them.
That doesn't mean those teams are gonna be better than the Bears.
It just means that when you look at on paper, this is where the Bears stack up.
If you were to do this-- If you would've done this exercise at the beginning of last season, I'm sure that the Bears wouldn't be highly regarded, but yet they finished where they did, and that's why ultimately they can make this list be, prove to be nothing if they go out and execute.
A lot like what they did in 2025, but like I said, if they do it in a more effective clip this upcoming season, divisional round, NFC championship, who knows?
But that's all on the Bears' list of things that they wanna accomplish this upcoming season.
