SEATTLE — The Bears have been talking Super Bowl ever since the end of last season, and things got a bit louder when they traded for star defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons last week.
Before they get to all that, however, it’s going to be brutal surviving the NFC North.
As good as the Bears felt about standing 5-2 going into their game Monday at the defending champion Seahawks — and rightfully so — that left them in third place in their own division and just inside the cut for the playoffs.
The Bears, of course, don’t think they’re the third-best team in the division, and neither do the oddsmakers. (Monday’s 34-17 win bumped them to second place in the NFC North.) Before their game against the Seahawks, the Bears had the sixth-best odds to win the Super Bowl at 12-1, with the Vikings 10th, the Lions 13th and the Packers 15th.
Sportsbooks don’t decide the standings, but that’s a reasonable outlook on the future of the division rather than going off how it stands at the moment.
The other relatively safe forecast at this point is that it’s going to be an absolute battle in the last two months of the regular season.
The NFC North was the only division in the NFL last season to have every team finish with a winning record, and it’s tracking toward repeating that feat. The four teams were a combined 16-3 in non-division games entering Monday.
There are no freebies in the division, and the Bears already lost what would figure to be their most favorable matchup, falling 9-3 to the Vikings at Soldier Field when quarterback Caleb Williams went down in Week 2. The Vikings are 6-1. And while the consensus is they won’t be able to sustain that level, they have the No. 2 defense in the league and had a lead against the Lions with five minutes left Sunday at Ford Field before taking their first loss.
The Bears are in a hole at 0-2 in the division — the other loss was a blowout defeat to the Packers at Lambeau Field with Tyson Bagent at quarterback — and will have to make up ground down the stretch. They visit the Lions on Thanksgiving, then close the season hosting the Packers and Lions in Weeks 16 and 17 before visiting the Vikings in Week 18.
The Bears managed to win the division last season despite going 2-4 in it, but they were the first team to do that since 2010, and the odds of pulling it off again are slim.
There will be minimal margin for error for the Bears, given what a favorable draw the NFC North got in the scheduling model this season. Every team in the division is playing the NFC South (they’re 7-2 against that group so far) and AFC East (5-1).
The teams also each will face a squad from the AFC South, where the Jaguars are the only club in the division that isn’t a disaster. The Bears will host them in Week 13, whereas everyone else in the NFC North will play a team that’s 2-5 or worse right now.
It’s only going to get tougher, too, with the Packers expecting to get star linebacker Micah Parsons back from a knee injury soon and the Lions and Vikings weighing whether to make big moves before the trade deadline next Tuesday.
Winning the division is crucial to the Bears’ championship hopes because it would change their playoff path completely. After taking the NFC North last season, they had two home playoff games. Had they and the 49ers reached the NFC Championship Game instead of the Rams and Seahawks, that would have been at Soldier Field, too.
The visit Monday to thunderous Lumen Field emphasized how important playing at home would be. Opponents don’t want to come here any more often than they have to.
The first question the Bears must answer is whether they’re truly better than the other three teams in their division.
• They can claim that with the Packers on the grounds of beating them twice in three games last season, including in the playoffs, and put a justifiable asterisk on the loss last month at Lambeau Field because they didn’t have Williams.
• They can’t make a peep when it comes to the Lions, who destroyed them early last season and clamped down on their offense at the end of it.
• They can shake off the early loss to the Vikings as an anomaly, but they can’t dismiss how well defensive coordinator extraordinaire Brian Flores outmaneuvered Williams and coach Ben Johnson that day. He’s good enough to do it again.
The Bears will get a chance to make definitive statements on all three fronts at the end of the season. It’s a near-certainty the division will be tight going into those last three weeks, and the Bears probably will need a sweep of those games to come out on top.