Chicago Bears Named Most Overrated NFL Team Ahead of 2024 Season

In a recent Bleacher Report piece, writer David Kenyon names the Bears one of the NFL’s most overrated teams coming into the 2024 season, citing the team’s rough path ahead in a tough NFC North:

“Ryan Poles has executed a smart plan since taking over as the Chicago Bears’ general manager. He cleared out the cap sheet, then reshaped the franchise’s future in a 2023 trade with the Carolina Panthers.

Still, it feels like the hype is coming one year early.

Chicago dealt Justin Fields to clear the path for rookie quarterback Caleb Williams, brought in veteran wideout Keenan Allen and drafted Rome Odunze. The offense, with no hesitation, is better on paper. Combine that with the defense’s encouraging finish to the 2023 campaign, and the rising expectations are rationale.

The problem is Chicago must navigate a division with the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers. Taking on the NFC West likely won’t help the Bears in wild-card tiebreakers, and last year’s defensive surge coincided with playing four of the NFL’s worst offenses.

Chicago is trending the right direction, but bracing for a fourth straight year outside of the postseason would be wise.”

Kenyon makes some good points and delivers some sobering realism to Bears fans who may be giddy over the incoming Williams and clear overall improvements to the team.

More Piercing Realism

He isn’t the only one, however, who has brought up the topic of an improving Bears’ tough path to the playoffs in a vastly improved division with some legit talent.

Joy Taylor of Speak on Fox Sports One rained on Chicago’s parade almost two weeks before April’s draft, when the drafting of Williams was every day headline material.

“So which team in the NFC is going to fall off so much that it’s going to provide an opportunity for Caleb Williams to come in and win four more games as a rookie in a very tough division?” Taylor asked.

“Did all of these other teams walk off the face of the planet? Do they exist?”

“What we think of this division is not real, it is a very tough division.

“The Packers beat the Cowboys down on the road in the playoffs, the Lions went to the NFC championship game,” she added. “These teams have momentum, they have experience, they have postseason wins. They have quarterbacks they have returning. They got better. They’re in their (the Bears’) division.

“So it’s not about what I think Caleb Williams is capable of doing. It’s about the fact that I just can’t seem to forget that other teams are actually good and that they are in the division and that they recently accomplished great things.

“And I just can’t dismiss what everyone else has been building to accommodate for one player that’s going to a team that has no culture, that has no history of winning as of late, whose coach we do not know is a good head coach, to all of these new additions — new additions by the way are all on paper, have not all played together,” she closed.

And, yeah, Taylor also has a point.

Chicago Bears fans expecting a quick total turnaround and an immediate run to the playoffs may be pretty disappointed. But, as Kenyon pointed out, Chicago is definitely trending in the right direction. We just may not know whether they are a true championship-level team for a few years.