Jaguars, Bears facing different expectations for 2026 season

The Jacksonville Jaguars and Chicago Bears were two of the biggest surprise teams in the NFL during the 2025 season. Under the leadership of first-year coaches (Liam Coen in Jacksonville and Ben Johnson in Chicago), both teams exceeded all preseason expectations and climbed to the top of their respective divisions, with the Jaguars winning 13 games to take the AFC South and the Bears winning 11 games to claim the NFC North.

Now that both teams have established themselves as playoff teams and are reigning division champions, there is going to be some significantly higher expectations this season.

But only one team is getting the preseason hype and facing the pressure to repeat.

And both coaches seem to have noticed that.

Bears, Jaguars facing very different expectations for the 2026 season

The observations started this week when Coen made note of the fact that every time he looks at the NFL website, he sees "40" pictures of Bears quarterback Caleb Williams and never sees anything about his team or players. He said it's great, because it allows him to sell his players on the idea that nobody thinks they are going to be any good or will not be able to repeat what they did a year ago.

It's not like the Jaguars don't have good players.

Quarterback Trevor Lawrence is coming off a huge year. 

They have one of the league's most unique players in two-way star Travis Hunter.

They were a top-10 team in points scored and in fewest points allowed.

In some ways, Coen is essentially using the lack of talk and attention as a form of bulletin board material. 

The counter to that is the expectation and attention the Bears are getting. 

And not all of that attention is promising.

While the Bears are one of the hot teams in the league, with a rising star quarterback, there is also a school of thought that their success in 2025 might have been a mirage, and that they could be a regression candidate this season.

Johnson pointed that out on Friday when asked about Coen's comments.

He made sure to point out that he knows his team is the No. 1 regression candidate in the NFL this season.

"Well, we're the No. 1 regression candidate so ... I think we've got plenty of motivation ourselves," Johnson said Friday. "We talked about [quarterback] Caleb [Williams] in the past. He's used to handling a lot of attention, so I'm not worried about that."

One of the potential issues people see in the Bears is that so many of their wins came in the final two minutes of games, with most of them being close, one-score decisions. There is something to be said for an inability to win close games, but having to rely on that so often, and having to come-from-behind so often, is not always a sustainable recipe for success.

But that also doesn't mean the Bears are going to find themselves in those same situations this season. Williams has another year of experience, the roster should be better, and they all have at least one year in Johnson's system. In some ways, having so much attention placed on that could be a way for the Bears, as both a coaching staff and roster, to be hyper aware of it and look to improve on it. 

It's an interesting dynamic because there is a simultaneous expectation for them to be good and also regress. But no matter which side of that fence you reside on, they are being talked about.

In Coen's mind, nobody is talking about the Jaguars positively or negatively. 

Both coaches seem to be embracing the different paths.