The Chicago Bears could be on the cusp of their next Super Bowl berth. That is even though they still have the entire offseason ahead of them.
Head coach Ben Johnson did more than set the foundation; he raised expectations in his first season at the helm, including coaxing marked progress from former No. 1 overall draft pick Caleb Williams.
If recent history holds, the Bears could be in the big game for Johnson’s encore.
Bears Poised to Benefit From Recent Super Bowl Trend
Bears Could Be Super Bowl Bound
The Bears reached the NFC Divisional Playoffs. They lost to the Los Angeles Rams, who were felled by the eventual Super Bowl champions, the Seattle Seahawks. Seattle’s win is what bodes well for the Bears, more so than their six degrees of separation.
“2026 is the Bears year [fire emoji],” BetMGM posted on X on February 12.
Included with the assertion was a graphic, which showed the Seahawks joined the 2024 Philadelphia Eagles in winning the Super Bowl twenty years after losing the big game.
The Bears last appeared in the Super Bowl following the 2006 season against the Indianapolis Colts. Chicago opened with a kick return for a touchdown by Hall of Famer Devin Hester.
Their only Super Bowl win came following the 1985 season.
Johnson would follow Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald in being a second-year head coach and winning it all.
However, Seattle won nine games under Pete Carroll the season before hiring MacDonald. The Eagles were also the NFC Champions two years before winning the Super Bowl under Nick Sirianni.
The Bears won five games in 2024.
They received no better than +2500 odds to win the Super Bowl next season, per Vegas Insider.
Bears Deemed Prime Regression Candidate
The 2026 season could be about maintaining just as much as progressing for Johnson and the Bears after their resurgent campaign in his first season at the helm. Teams will know more about what they like to do as an offense with the film they put out.
CBS Sports’ Garrett Podell picked them among the teams “poised to take a major step back.”
“No team had a more clutch year in close games in the 2025 season than the Bears,” Podell wrote on February 12. “They’ll need to recapture that magic again in 2026, as well as relying on prayer, because regression to the mean hits almost every year for NFL teams that rely on clutch or one-score wins.
“While it sounds wild to say, the 2025 season may have been the Bears’ best shot to make a Super Bowl run with Williams on his rookie contract.”
Podell cited the Bears’ tight salary cap situation and looming changes on the defensive back end among the reasons why the Bears could regress. Of course, improvement from Johnson and Williams is the X factor that can determine more than anything else the Bears do.