Chicago Bears
Six Chicago Bears to Watch in 2026
The Bears won the NFC North last season on the strength of a transformed offense and a defense that lived on takeaways. Whether they hold the division comes down to a handful of individual answers. These are the six players whose seasons will decide it.
Caleb Williams, QB
Everything starts here, and there’s no version of this season where it doesn’t.
Williams’ second year under Ben Johnson was the leap — a dramatic improvement on a lukewarm rookie campaign, nearly 4,000 passing yards, and stretches where the No. 1 overall pick looked like the player the draft promised. It also ended badly. He threw five interceptions across two playoff games, including the overtime divisional-round loss to the Rams.
The 2026 assignment is different from the 2025 one. Defenses now have a full year of tape on Johnson’s system. The Bears’ most-cited flaw was a sluggish start-of-game offense that spent the season climbing out of early holes. Fixing that is squarely a quarterback-and-coordinator problem, and it’s the difference between eleven wins and thirteen.
Colston Loveland, TE
The most likely breakout on the roster. Loveland led the Bears in receiving as a rookie — remarkable for a tight end on a team with this many pass-catchers — and had a dominant training camp.
Johnson’s offense is built to use tight ends in a way most schemes aren’t, and Chicago’s tight end room is deep enough that he can deploy multiple looks without tipping personnel. If Loveland takes the second-year jump the camp reports suggest, he becomes the matchup problem that unlocks everything underneath.
Luther Burden III, WR
With D.J. Moore gone, the target tree has genuinely changed shape. Rome Odunze is the established No. 1 and cleared his injury questions in camp. The open question is what sits behind him.
Burden is the answer the Bears are hoping for. The WR3 role in this offense is not a throwaway job — Johnson’s scheme creates volume for whoever earns it. How the reps get distributed in September will tell you a lot about how the passing game looks in December.
Ozzy Trapilo, OT
The most consequential name on the injury report.
Trapilo broke out as a starter in 2025 and then ruptured a patella tendon in the wild-card win over Green Bay. He got back on the field about seven months later — well ahead of the team’s own projections — which means he takes a roster spot rather than a PUP designation and works back to game speed on his own timeline.
Until then, Braxton Jones is the favorite at left tackle, with Theo Benedet, Kiran Amegadjie and free-agent addition Jedrick Wills Jr. behind him. The Bears wanted this settled before camp ended. It isn’t. Trapilo’s return date is effectively the date the offensive line becomes whole.
Logan Jones, C
The rookie with the clearest long-term claim on a starting job.
Chicago traded for veteran Garrett Bradbury as a stopgap and then drafted Jones — Iowa’s reigning Rimington Trophy winner — as the actual answer at center. Ben Johnson confirmed an open competition between the two during camp. Whoever wins it in September, the succession plan isn’t a secret: this is Jones’ position for 2027 and beyond.
Watch how quickly the coaching staff trusts him with line calls. That’s the tell.
Devin Bush, LB
The defense’s numbers from 2025 don’t agree with each other. Chicago led the NFL with 33 takeaways and 23 interceptions and still finished 23rd in scoring defense, 29th in total defense and tied for 22nd in sacks.
That’s a unit surviving on splash plays, and takeaways are the least repeatable stat in football. Ryan Poles spent the offseason on that gap — safety Coby Bryant was the marquee defensive addition, and Bush arrives after a 2025 in which he was the only player in the league with two pick-six returns, including a 97-yarder.
Bush is the interesting case because he represents the bet the Bears are making: that they can keep generating turnovers and fix the underlying defense. If the takeaway number regresses and the pass rush doesn’t improve, that’s the season.
Also worth tracking
Kyler Gordon, CB — his return from PUP has no firm timeline, and a reserve/PUP designation would cost him the first four games. The secondary is deep enough to absorb it, but he’s the best version of that room.
Darnell Wright, OT — a second-team All-Pro at right tackle and the one spot on the line nobody has to think about. Mentioned here precisely because he won’t be mentioned again.
Chicago Sports Wire covers Bears news, injuries and game coverage all season. See the Bears schedule for kickoff times and broadcast info.