Tear Up The Fun Fraud Files Because The Chicago Bears Are Absolutely For Real
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.The fun fraud bit is over. This 2025 Chicago Bears team is real and they're spectacular. Having a -3 point differential and an 8-3 record is not what you'd call convincing. But you know what is? Going into the Philly and making the Super Bowl champs look like chumps. Leaving Jalen pouty pants Hurts staring into the abyss like a poker player waiting to have his bluff called and fans booing as early as the first quarter is convincing. Even in Philly. It was a tough afternoon for Eagles fans including who I'll just assume is Kirk Cousins' nephew.
Lot of Bears fans apparently didn't take well to the fun fraud label. In fact, pretty much all of y'all. I guess I'm the only one that likes to have a little fun around here anymore. My entire angle as a part-time hobby blogger is to have fun with numbers and if that means it's directed at my team then so be it. That's called integrity. But if I'm going to blog over and over at the 2022 Vikings through their fraud season and take heat from their fans then I have to be fair and do it when I see it with my own team. See something, say something. That's the real world life of a sports team fraud detector they won't teach you about in school.
Besides, Frank Abagnale Jr. was pretty cool. It was fun watching this team keep getting away with it. The only difference it appears is they learned to fly the plane in mid air and performed the major surgery without wussing out. And it's not Leo playing the lead in this story. It's Ben Johnson. He's performing wizardry of the highest order with this run game. Literally no one saw this coming against the stout defensive line of the Eagles.
So rip up those files. I don't know if this tweet was directed at me or not but either way the "fuck you" ending is downright hilarious.
Let's get to some real stats.
The Bears run game has been impressive enough to make the 90s Cowboys blush. 281 yards rushing. You're probably already aware of that. Out of the 364 team games this season, it ranks third in total team rush yards. Week 10 Colts are first with 323. Second? The Bears vs the Bengals with 283. A game in which Kyle Monangai went for 26/176 which at 6.8 yards per rush was the worst of any of the Bears four rushers in that game. But the 281-yards on the ground overall misses how impressive this performance was. Jonathan Taylor took a few long ones in that Week 10, including an 83-yarder. The longest rush of Friday's game was 31-yards by Monangai. That's what was so impressive. Well, not the run itself, but what that means. Al Michaels certainly wasn't impressed. At that point in the game he was so used to the Bears plowing through the Eagles front he called that play with all the emotions of a first down three-yard half-back dive up the A-gap. Or a team coming back from down 27 to win a Wild Card game. Your pick.
31-yards isn't eye-popping for a longest rush of a game. But this means that the Bears had to have that many more paper cut runs to dominate the game consistently and put Al Michaels to bed. 28 rushes 4-yards or more. That's tops in the league this season. Second best league-wide is 26. That'd be the Bears again in Cincinnati. All from a first-year head coach who just seems to have all the answers.
Ryan Poles deserves a lot of credit for this too. How cool is it to not only be the "offseason champs", but to watch it actually play out beyond our wildest dreams in the fall? And taking Colston Loveland who has the catch radius of a spotlight waving left and right into the clouds. How much of all this was Poles vs Ben? I don't know, but Poles signed the paperwork. Everything about this team is humming.
Well…
We are still waiting for Caleb Williams to put this accuracy thing together. Yes it was windy as all hell. Never a great sign for the passing game when the wind blocks an extra point (hand up at that point I was absolutely kind of hoping the Bears would win 10-9 to keep the fun fraud bit going). The only thing is this was pretty much the same game we see from Caleb every week. Unless Eberflus is calling on the other side. Did the wind cause the screen pass interception or hitting a defensive lineman in the helmet? How about the dreadful footwork with the open man in the endzone? Were all of the deep errant throws really caused by the wind when even Jalen Hurts put one in the bucket for that touchdown to Brown?
Sure, as always, there were receiver miscues. Credit the script writers for changing it up this week going with a couple slips vs drops. Keeping it fresh. The DJ Moore one hurt as this would have put the Bears in scoring range on a dime of a timing pass. That just seems to be the thing every week. Two or three throws only a few other quarterbacks in the league can make mixed in with a bunch of awful ones. But we are 29 games into the Caleb Williams era. This is alarming.
I don't see any way this magically gets fixed this year. But I can't wait to see what Ben Johnson does with Caleb over the summer. This is the final piece of the puzzle. Caleb Williams is a gamer. The easiest dude in the world to root for. For all the nonsense he's gotten for being entitled and not willing to put the work in, he's adapted to playing under center, and reduced the sacks to a level pretty much no one else has ever done. People say he's grown into being clutch. I think that's a discredit to him. You either have that or you don't. And no one seems to remember he showed it in the Fail Mary game before Tyrique Men and Black zapped it from everyone's memory. He just hasn't had the team to show it yet until now.
I will say this. My post-game rage blog after the Ravens game calling his play "truly awful" was post-game crash out exaggerated (Bears 5-0 since FYI). But the fact is he has been flat out bad. Consistently. You want to get mad at me for pointing that out fine, but get mad at him too shaking his head on his way to shake hands every game. I spent years waiting for Jay to "clean up" his footwork and throw more accurately. At least Caleb is limiting the interceptions, but he also has on offensive line Cutty would have killed for instead of being killed from.
Whatever. None of this might matter in 2025 because he's good enough for Ben Johnson to work with. All that matters is Green Bay. If the Bears could beat them with the ashes of a Matt Eberflus team then why not with the wizard of a coach they have now? He's been waiting for his chance to play LeFleur. Chirping at him. He wants the smoke.
I can't wait to see what he's got in store.