LAS VEGAS — Yet another new coach, same quarterback, same old song and dance with the Bears, who have posted one winning season in their last 12 campaigns, in 2025-26?
This can be a sweet spot on the NFL wagering calendar, post-draft and pre-training camp, that can provide value. Select experts who have supplied profits in this space have been tapped for their insights.
A year ago, they helped me fashion a totals portfolio in which I went 5-0, all on under action, so those are the opinions I sought in excavating potential Bears plays here; next week, the overall NFL.
I won’t stake a position with the Bears, whose win total opened at 8.5, with a +110 price, at DraftKings about six weeks ago and has been steadily whittled to +105 and, a few days ago, to even.
People have been gradually betting that the Bears will win at least nine games.
Follow that trend or go against the growing herd?
On BetMGM’s recent “Bet Sweats” podcast and show, on the Audacy national radio network (8 to 11 a.m. on 105.9-FM HD2 in Chicago), co-hosts Joe Ostrowski and Sam Panayotovich debated that total.
It ended quickly, like Tyson in his prime. Ostrowski noted that, since the sacking of coach Lovie Smith after the 2012 season, the Bears have gone over a projected win total only once, when quarterback Mitch Trubisky went 12-4 in 2018.
“Then they got double-doinked in the playoffs, and that’s it,” Panayotovich said. “Yikes!”
Since then, the Bears are 49-69 overall, 51-62-5 (45.1%) against the spread, the sixth-worst rate in the league.
“Alarming,” Panayotovich said. “I wouldn’t bet the Bears over 8.5, at +115, when I could bet them to make the playoffs at +160,” or risk $100 to win $160.
“It’s basically the same fundamental position, but you get an extra 45 cents if you’re right.”
Split decisions
A Pythagorean theorem extrapolated by Kiev O’Neil, at OddsBreakers, pegs the Bears winning 6.26 games, or more likely to win six than seven games.
However, that’s most accurate, O’Neil wrote me, if everything last season remains the same for this season. This, of course, is former Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson’s maiden voyage as the Bears’ head coach.
The “pythag” also can’t account for odd bounces, good luck or bad fortune, penalties missed by zebras or fraudulent calls by them.
Do factoring in a new coach, draft and free-agency additions and a fourth-place schedule all merit a two-win increase, the DraftKings win total of 8.5? That, O’Neil wrote, is the question for bettors.
For Matt Youmans, senior broadcaster/writer at the Vegas Stats & Information Network (VSiN) and an Indiana native, under 8.5 for the Bears (and over 8.5 for the Chargers) jumped off the sheets at him a year ago.
The Bears went 5-12; the Chargers finished 11-6.
On a Honolulu holiday Monday, Youmans took a break between holes of the majestic Royal Hawaiian Golf Club to say he has not yet bet on any NFL totals.
“[But] I’m not planning to bet the Bears under this season,” he said, “because the new coaching staff is a major upgrade. I also expect the Lions and Vikings to slip some.”
Former UNLV quarterback Jon Denton was raised in Vegas and churns out profit annually betting in and around Iowa, where he resides with his family.
And he favors wagering under 8.5 for the Bears, who sport the league’s seventh-toughest schedule this season. Since Smith, Johnson is the team’s sixth new coach.
“Where do I start?” he said. “A lot of moving parts here. New coach with a QB-structured system and a freelancer [Caleb Williams] at QB. I’ll start there. Went from seven wins in ’23 to five in ’24.
“Should see more than five this season, but Green Bay, Detroit and Minnesota present a tough division. I like under 8.5.”
Too tasty
The last words here deserve to be those of Tom Barton, the veteran Long Island handicapper who became a Bears fan during their glorious 1985 season.
He said, “That’s what hooked me!” Barton can diagnose a bet on a game as well as anyone I know, even when it comes to his Bears; for him, an ultimate head-or-heart decision.
Finally, he said, a Bears regime made serious moves to address the offensive line by drafting Ozzy Trapilo and Luke Newman and acquiring Drew Dalman, Joe Thuney and Jonah Jackson.
“A big positive,” Barton said. “The experience is massive, and I would say they went from a ‘C’ line to a ‘B,’ maybe a ‘B+.’ That’s a big upgrade … you can’t do anything from the skill positions without [a solid] line.”
He never invests in NFL futures until training camps end because too many major injuries can happen, and that provides time to gauge public plays. He does most often lean toward under win totals.
“But the Bears certainly look tempting,” Barton said. “I like the over. They’ll be a very public bet this year, but I just can’t get over the offense they are putting together.
“They also get [safety Jaquan] Brisker back healthy, a forgotten add for them. I don’t love betting on a new head coach in his first coaching gig [or] a potential sophomore jinx for Williams, but it’s too tasty to do anything but take the over.”