Chicago Bears
NFC North 2026: A Bears Fan’s Guide to the Division
The NFC North was the only division in football where every team finished above .500 last season. The Bears leapt from the cellar to the top of it. Detroit and Minnesota fell to the bottom of a group where the bottom was still a winning record.
Nothing about 2026 looks easier. Here’s what Chicago is up against.
Green Bay Packers
2025: 9-7-1, a back-door playoff berth that ended with a wild-card loss in Chicago.
The Packers have the roster to win this division and a September problem that could cost them it.
Micah Parsons tore up his knee last December and opened camp on the physically unable to perform list. Everything about how he and the club have discussed the timeline points to a cautious approach, which likely means starting the season on PUP and missing the first four games. Green Bay paid an enormous price for Parsons — no first-round pick in either of the last two drafts — and the defense is built around having him.
His absence exposes a thin edge group. Trading Rashan Gary made sense in isolation and looks worse without Parsons on the field. Green Bay needs former first-rounder Lukas Van Ness to finally arrive, with fourth-round rookie Dani Dennis-Sutton as the depth option. The Packers also lost defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley and signed defensive tackle Javon Hargrave as their most notable free-agent addition, plus South Carolina cornerback Brandon Cisse in the second round.
The offense is stable. Jordan Love has settled the quarterback position, Josh Jacobs carries the run game, Tucker Kraft is a genuine weapon at tight end, and the receiver room is deep without an obvious alpha.
The Bears’ angle: Chicago’s best chance to bank division wins is early, while Parsons is out.
Detroit Lions
2025: 9-8, missed the playoffs.
The most dangerous team in the division on paper, and the one with the most to prove.
Detroit’s 2025 was a genuine disappointment — a first-place schedule, offensive line problems and defensive injuries added up to a nine-win season and no January football, two years after a 15-2 campaign. Most of the league is treating that as an aberration rather than a decline, and the roster supports that read.
Jared Goff is not electric and he is not a mistake machine either, and the weapons around him are as good as any group in the conference: Jahmyr Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams and Sam LaPorta. The offensive line has been retooled and the defense restocked through the draft and free agency. New offensive coordinator Drew Petzing is the variable — a scheme change on an offense this talented could go either direction in the short term.
Dan Campbell’s teams don’t tend to have soft seasons back to back.
The Bears’ angle: If Detroit’s line holds up and the defense stays healthy, this is the team most likely to take the division back.
Minnesota Vikings
2025: Above .500, and defined entirely by quarterback trouble.
Minnesota’s season came apart under center. J.J. McCarthy struggled with both health and consistency, and the Vikings spent a year wasting one of the best coaching staffs and skill groups in the league.
Kyler Murray’s arrival is the fix. Kevin O’Connell has publicly insisted on an open competition, and there’s a real argument that McCarthy winning it would be better for the franchise long-term — but Murray appears to be ahead, and O’Connell’s offense with a mobile, accurate quarterback throwing to Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, Jauan Jennings and T.J. Hockenson is a genuinely frightening proposition.
Minnesota opens at home against Green Bay and has a Mexico City date with San Francisco later in the year.
The Bears’ angle: The widest range of outcomes in the division. If the quarterback situation resolves cleanly, the Vikings are a contender. If it doesn’t, they’re the team Chicago can most reliably beat.
Chicago Bears
2025: 11-6, NFC North champions, a wild-card win over Green Bay, an overtime divisional-round loss to the Rams.
Ben Johnson’s first season transformed a bottom-ten offense into a top-ten unit and ended a seven-year division-title drought. Year two asks a harder question, because nobody will be surprised this time.
The offense returns Caleb Williams, Rome Odunze and Colston Loveland, with Luther Burden III competing for a larger role after D.J. Moore’s departure. The line is unsettled at left tackle until Ozzy Trapilo is back from a knee injury. The defense led the league in takeaways and finished in the bottom third in nearly every other category — a contradiction the front office spent the offseason trying to resolve with additions like Coby Bryant and Devin Bush.
The realistic case: the offense takes another step, the defense’s underlying numbers catch up to its turnover luck, and Chicago defends the title. The realistic worry: the takeaways regress, the pass rush doesn’t improve, and eleven wins turns into eight in a division where eight wins finishes last.
The bottom line
Four teams, all plausibly capable of winning ten games, in a division that produced no losing records last season. There is a real chance this comes down to the final week — and a real chance three of these teams make the playoffs, if the NFC West doesn’t take the wild-card spots first.
The Bears’ path is the same one that worked last year: win the games in September that the rest of the division isn’t ready to play yet.
Chicago Sports Wire covers the Bears and the NFC North all season. See the Bears schedule for kickoff times and broadcast info.