When Ryan Poles stepped in as Bears general manager in 2022, he laid out a mission statement to “take the North and never give it back.” It sounded good, and if the Bears had done some damage in the NFC North, it’d look great on a t-shirt.
Instead, after three consecutive last-place finishes, it haunts them.
The North is arguably the most rigorous division, and the Lions and Packers have stood atop it as championship contenders for years. But the first step for the Bears to “take the North” is to establish definitively that they’re ahead of the Vikings, whom they visit Sunday.
Bears coach Ben Johnson said some things about the North at his introductory news conference in January, too, calling it “the toughest division in football” and musing about going against Lions coach Dan Campbell and the Vikings’ Kevin O’Connell, as well as taking aim at the Packers by mentioning how much he “enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a year.”
In his three seasons as Lions offensive coordinator, the team went 5-1 each against the Vikings, Packers and Bears and won the division twice. By leaving for the Bears, Johnson went from the summit of Mt. North to its foot, but Friday he was in no mood to zoom out for a look at how steep the climb is for his team.
“I probably don’t look at it from that lens,” he said. “I’m very much day-by-day and week-by-week. Any given week there’s a path to victory, and I don’t think it matters who your opponent is.
“We don’t control who’s on our schedule, other than you’re going to have your division twice a year, and we focus on those games when they come to us. So I’ve been saying all along this week, ‘We’re 0-2 in the division right now.’ This is a big one for us. We desperately need this win.”
Their first game against the Vikings was Johnson’s debut as a head coach and was a harsh reminder of how much work the Bears needed to do. Johnson was smoldering after his team blew a 17-6 lead in the fourth quarter and lost 27-17.
The Bears do desperately need this one, as Johnson said, and it surely won’t come easily.
The Vikings are in transition with new quarterback J.J. McCarthy and have gone up and down in their 4-5 start, but they are no joke. They rallied to beat the Bears at Soldier Field in the season opener, beat the Lions two weeks ago and had one-score losses to the Steelers, Eagles and Ravens.
Moreover, they’ve rarely been a pushover for the Bears. The Vikings have beaten them eight of their last nine meetings — the Bears’ lone win was 12-10 in 2023 — and outpaced them in their dueling rebuilds.
The Bears rebooted with Poles and Matt Eberflus in 2022, and the Vikings hired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell. The Bears have gone 21-39 and fired Eberflus last year, while the Vikings have gone 38-22 and O’Connell is on his second contract.
During that time, amid plenty of their own rebuilding challenges, the Vikings have gone 12-8 in the North and gone to the playoffs twice. The Bears have had the worst divisional record in the NFL in that span at 3-17 and haven’t gotten close.
They hit the draft looking for a quarterback at the same time, last year, when the Bears chose Caleb Williams No. 1 and the Vikings took McCarthy 10th. McCarthy missed his entire rookie season because of a knee injury, and Williams’ didn’t go so well, either, under the poor guidance of Eberflus and former offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.
Williams is 20th this season with a 92.2 passer rating. McCarthy missed five games because of a sprained ankle and is at 65.8, and he’ll be making his fifth career start Sunday.
Poles leveled up at coach, it seems, by replacing Eberflus with Johnson. Everything about the way he has operated so far indicates the Bears finally are in good hands for the first time since Lovie Smith.
Those are key areas where the Bears need to put themselves on the same footing as the rest of the division: head coach and quarterback. The better they are at those two spots, the better their long-term chances in the North.
O’Connell, Campbell and LaFleur all are more accomplished than Johnson, but he appears to be very much in their weight class. Williams, meanwhile, has more experience and is playing better than McCarthy, and the Bears need it to stay that way.
This is their time to begin proving their legitimacy. The first part of the schedule was favorable to the Bears, especially with Johnson and Williams acclimating to each other, but the second half is a beast. The Vikings and Browns are their only remaining opponents without a winning record, and the Bears will visit the defending champion Eagles in two weeks in addition to games against the 49ers, Packers (twice) and Lions.
That’s the best way to measure the Bears’ progress: testing against stronger competition. If it’s been real growth and it continues, it’ll show against better teams, too, and it starts with handling the Vikings on the road.