Bears Named Among 14 Teams That Can Win the Super Bowl
Fueled by Ben Johnson's explosive ground game, the Chicago Bears emerge as a legitimate title contender despite lingering questions surrounding their defensive consistency.
Video Transcript
What's going on everybody?
Nicholas Morano here from Roundtable Sports.
For today's video, we look into a recent article from Sports Illustrated.
Connor Orr, he identified 14 teams that have a legitimate chance to make this upcoming Super Bowl, and the Super Bowl will be played at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
And among those 14 teams, he named the Chicago Bears as one of those teams that has a shot at making this year's last game, the final one in the 2026 NFL season.
Some teams that he left off, which were surprising, which kind of shows you the legitimacy of what it takes to be one of those final teams: Cincinnati Bengals, Philadelphia Eagles, and Kansas City Chiefs.
One of the things that Orr wrote would distinguish what teams can separate themselves was this.
Again, I don't wanna be o-- I wanna be as open as possible when it comes to the Chiefs in particular, as it may look like a troll of some kind to leave them off the list.
As I said earlier, I believe the story of the 2026 season's gonna be told through versatile defensive fronts and offenses that are set up to create consistent explosive plays in the running game.
Now, the last part of that applies to the Chicago Bears, an explosive running game.
The Bears were the third best at doing so last season.
They finished with the third most rushing yards, but they also finished with the third most explosive run plays, 10 yards or more, with 67.
The versatile defensive fronts, defensive coordinator Dennis Allen does bring that to the equation, but that's also probably the Achilles' heel of this Bears team going into 2026, their defense, the pass rush, how it's going to play out in this upcoming season, second time, second year with Dennis Allen.
But in terms of explosion, creating big runs in, in the run game, but also Caleb Williams and Ben Johnson, there should be a lot of optimism what that unit can do going into their second season in Johnson's scheme.
Like I said, the defense might be what holds this team back from being the NFC representative in this year's Super Bowl, and there's also a bunch of different factors.
Like, this is a tough schedule the Bears are playing.
The NFC North in itself is a quest where the Bears gotta see if they can be the repeat champions.
But the Bears do have the offensive pi- firepower to contend with some of the best teams in the league.
I'm just still curious about what the defense will bring to the equation this upcoming season.
Boom.
