Chicago Bears

The 2025 Chicago Bears went 11-6, won the NFC North, and lost in overtime at home to the Rams in the Divisional Round, 20-17 — one week after ending a 15-year playoff-win drought with a stunning comeback over the Packers. Best season in a decade and a half, and it had a flavor: the Cardiac Bears rallied from fourth-quarter deficits to win six regular-season games, the most by any NFL team since at least 1970. Ben Johnson arrived from Detroit and became the first Bears head coach ever to win a playoff game as a rookie. The offense jumped from 32nd in yards to sixth, the defense led the league in turnover differential for the first time since the 1985 title team, and Chicago went 5-0 in November for the first time since 1959. The arc wasn't clean — a Week 2 blowout in Detroit and a Week 17 shootout loss in San Francisco kept everyone honest — but the headline is simple. The Bears smashed.

Chicago's team portrait is a balanced, healthy profile: plus 48.1 expected points added through the air and plus 39.0 on the ground — and expected points added, for the newer listener, is how much each snap moved the Bears' chances of scoring. Both sides landed positive-per-play, passing at plus 0.08 per dropback and rushing at plus 0.08 per carry. The defense forced 33 takeaways against just 11 offensive giveaways — a plus 22 margin that is the engine behind the Cardiac Bears identity. They converted 43 percent on third down and held opponents to 41 percent, a wash in the sticks game, which means turnover margin and explosive plays tilted the season. Week to week it was boom-or-bust on the scoreboard — 47 on the Bengals, 31 three separate times, but also 52 hung on them in Detroit and 42 in San Francisco — steady in the underlying numbers.

Now let's talk about the passing offense. The passing game posted plus 48.1 expected points added, 234.8 yards per game, 28 touchdowns against just 11 offensive turnovers, and surrendered only 24 sacks — a clean, efficient, top-ten profile, though boom-or-bust with 71 explosive plays of 20-plus yards, roughly 4.2 a game. Caleb Williams broke Erik Kramer's franchise single-season passing record with 3,942 yards, adding 27 touchdown throws against 7 interceptions, 383 yards and 3 scores on the ground, and plus 42.2 passing expected points added. The defining throw of the year came Week 16 on Saturday night in overtime against the Packers — 4th-and-the-season, Williams drops a 46-yard touchdown to DJ Moore to clinch the NFC North and end a 15-year home drought against Green Bay. That's the passing offense in one snap: patient for three quarters, then lethal down the field.

Now let's dig into the rushing offense. Chicago's ground game was a legitimate top-tier attack — plus 39.0 rushing expected points added, 145.1 yards per game, 19 touchdowns on 496 carries, and a steady weekly floor. D'Andre Swift led the way with 1,087 rushing yards on 223 carries, 9 rushing touchdowns, 34 catches for 299 more yards, and plus 15.4 rushing expected points added. The committee feel showed up in the red zone, where the Bears punched in 32 touchdowns on 180 trips — an 18 percent touchdown-per-snap rate that played perfectly with Ben Johnson's fourth-down aggression. Rarely invisible, frequently the closer, the ground game kept a pulse on days the deep ball wasn't connecting.

Next up, the pass defense. Dennis Allen's secondary allowed plus 17.8 expected points added through the air — and for defense, you want that number as negative as possible, so a modestly positive figure means roughly league-average per-play efficiency. But that's not how this unit made its living. The Bears got home for 35 sacks and took the ball away — most of the 33 total takeaways came through the air, headlined by safety Tremaine Edmunds, whose fourth-quarter pick of Joe Flacco in the Week 9 shootout at Cincinnati was exactly the game-sealing splash that built the Cardiac Bears identity. Boom-or-bust weekly — they gave up 52 in Detroit and 42 in both Cincinnati and San Francisco, so when they got muffed, they got muffed loud — but the ball-hawking floor never disappeared. Bend-and-take-it-away, not lockdown, and that's exactly the math Allen was playing.

And the run defense. Chicago allowed 134.8 rushing yards per game on 452 carries and 15 rushing touchdowns, but the expected points added figure was effectively zero — plus 0.68 on the year, steady week to week against the run. Translation: opponents moved the ball on the ground in volume but almost never gained a real scoring edge doing it. Defensive end Montez Sweat was the disruption point, with multiple strip-sacks on the year including the Week 12 takeaway that helped seal the comeback win over the Steelers. Pair a neutral run defense with a turnover-hunting pass defense and you get exactly what Chicago built: the NFL's best turnover differential and an 11-win season.