LAKE FOREST, IL - Three seasons ago, the Chicago Bears were two points away from a championship.
Today, they are trying to prove that run was not the beginning and end of their window.
Head coach Mark Miller enters Season 36 with a Bears team coming off consecutive 7-10 finishes, the latest ending with six straight losses after Chicago had once positioned itself squarely in the postseason conversation. What makes the coming season so intriguing is that Miller does not have to imagine what a contender in Chicago looks like. He has already built one.
Season 32 ended with the Bears in the Super Bowl. Season 33 brought another playoff run. The last two years have produced 14 wins combined.
Season 36 is about figuring out which version of Chicago is closer to the truth.
Season 35 Started With Promise Before Everything Unraveled
For nearly half the season, Chicago looked capable of returning to the postseason.
The Bears opened Season 35 with victories over the Washington Commanders and Minnesota Vikings, rebounded from a three-point loss at San Francisco by beating the Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Rams, and improved to 5-1 after a victory over the Arizona Cardinals.
Then the season changed.
Losses to the Las Vegas Raiders, Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs produced a three-game slide before Chicago briefly recovered with consecutive victories over the Pittsburgh Steelers and Detroit Lions. The Bears would not win again.
Chicago lost its final six games, including three straight NFC North defeats against Green Bay, Detroit and Minnesota before closing the season with losses to the Seattle Seahawks, Los Angeles Chargers and Atlanta Falcons. What had begun as a 5-1 season ended at 7-10.
The final numbers reflected that inconsistency. Chicago averaged only 18.8 points and 291.6 yards per game, while opponents averaged 23.8 points. The running game produced just 79.8 yards per game and 3.7 yards per carry, forcing the offense to lean heavily on its quarterback.
Caleb Williams Remains the Center of Everything
Whatever changes around him, the Bears’ Season 36 ceiling will still be closely connected to Caleb Williams.
Williams started all 17 games in Season 35 and completed 62.7 percent of his passes for 3,613 yards, 22 touchdowns and 12 interceptions, finishing with a 90.0 quarterback rating. He also added 277 yards on the ground.
Those numbers were solid without reaching the heights of his Season 32 performance, when Williams helped carry Chicago through the postseason and into the Super Bowl.
Training camp has offered encouraging signs that another step forward could be coming.
Williams completed 9 of 10 passes with five touchdowns during one red-zone session, then followed it the next day by completing all six passes during a two-minute drill that ended with a touchdown to Luther Burden III. More recently, he connected with Rome Odunze for a 58-yard gain during a game-like practice designed to test the offense without a scripted series of plays.
Those are training-camp reps rather than Season 36 statistics, but after the way Season 35 ended, Chicago will gladly take signs that its quarterback and offense are developing rhythm.
The Receiving Corps Is Moving Forward Without DJ Moore
One of the most significant changes around Williams comes at receiver.
Rome Odunze led Chicago with 880 receiving yards on 78 catches during Season 35, while DJ Moore followed with 855 yards and four touchdowns. Luther Burden III contributed 363 yards and three touchdowns in nine games.
Moore will not be part of the next chapter.
Chicago traded him to the Buffalo Bills in March along with a fifth-round pick in exchange for a second-round selection, removing one of Williams’ most productive Season 35 targets from the offense.
That puts even more responsibility on Odunze and Burden, and both have been heavily involved throughout camp. Odunze produced one of the highlights of training camp with a contested touchdown catch in the back of the end zone, while Burden caught the touchdown that completed Williams’ perfect two-minute drill.
Veteran Kalif Raymond also joined the receiver room during free agency and has already been involved with the first-team offense. After one successful situational drive, Raymond summed up the importance of execution simply: "As long as we know what we’ve got, everything will work."
Chicago also drafted LSU receiver Zavion Thomas in the third round, adding another young option to a receiving corps that will look different without Moore.
A Better Running Game Could Take Pressure Off Williams
Perhaps nothing would help Chicago’s quarterback more than fixing one of Season 35’s most obvious weaknesses.
The Bears rushed for only 1,357 yards as a team, with Jordan Staley leading the club at just 422 yards. No Chicago running back reached 500 yards, despite the offense producing 17 rushing touchdowns.
The current backfield gives Miller a different opportunity.
D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai have both been prominent during training camp, and a recent game-like practice opened with Swift breaking consecutive short-yardage runs around the right side. Williams believes a productive Swift changes more than just the ground game.
"He’s going to be a big piece of that," Williams said while discussing what Swift can mean to the offense.
Chicago has also invested further in the offensive line. Darnell Wright signed a four-year extension through 2031, while the Bears drafted Iowa lineman Logan Jones with the 57th overall selection. Veteran Jedrick Wills Jr. joined during free agency, and Chicago acquired Garrett Bradbury from New England in March.
After Williams took 42 sacks in Season 35, improvement up front would have value well beyond the running game.
The Defense Is Being Reworked Around Familiar Pieces
Chicago’s Season 35 defense had productive individual performers even when the overall results were uneven.
T.J. Edwards led the Bears with 81 tackles and two interceptions, while Montez Sweat recorded seven sacks and Dayo Odeyingbo added six. Jaylon Johnson broke up 11 passes, and Kyler Gordon recorded 76 tackles with 12 pass defenses.
Some of those familiar pieces remain, but the group around them has changed.
Chicago signed linebacker Devin Bush, defensive lineman Neville Gallimore and defensive back Coby Bryant during free agency. The Bears later added veteran safety Xavier Woods during camp after injuries began affecting the secondary. Bryant, however, underwent knee surgery and is expected to miss four to six months, immediately changing the plans for one of Chicago’s major offseason additions.
Bush has already made his presence felt, including an interception during a game-like practice and a big hit to finish another competitive late-game drill earlier in camp.
Dillon Thieneman Is Giving Chicago Something to Watch
The rookie class could become an important part of Miller’s attempt to push the Bears back toward contention.
Chicago selected safety Dillon Thieneman 25th overall, then followed with Logan Jones at No. 57, tight end Sam Roush at No. 69 and receiver Zavion Thomas at No. 89. Defensive back Malik Muhammad, linebacker Keyshaun Elliott and defensive lineman Jordan van den Berg completed the seven-player class.
Thieneman has already made his presence known.
On his 22nd birthday, the rookie intercepted Williams during a late-game situation to preserve a defensive stop, and he has continued receiving significant work with the first-team secondary.
Van den Berg has also emerged as one of the more noticeable young defenders in camp, earning opportunities with higher units after consistently creating problems at the line of scrimmage.
For a Bears team trying to reverse consecutive losing seasons, immediate contributions from even two or three members of this class could make a meaningful difference.
Mark Miller Has Already Taken Chicago From the Bottom to the Super Bowl
Miller’s current run in Chicago began in Season 30 with a 3-14 finish.
Season 31 improved only slightly to 6-11.
Then everything changed.
Chicago went 11-6 in Season 32, defeated the Green Bay Packers 34-29 in the Wild Card round, beat the San Francisco 49ers 23-17 in the Divisional Round and overwhelmed the Minnesota Vikings 45-27 in the NFC Championship Game.
That run sent Miller to his second Super Bowl as a head coach and his first since winning the championship in Season 8.
The Bears came agonizingly close to giving him another one.
Williams threw for 472 yards and five touchdowns against the Houston Texans, while Odunze caught 11 passes for 187 yards and four scores. Chicago ultimately fell 38-36 in the Season 32 Super Bowl, with its final two-point attempt failing as time expired.
Miller defended the aggressive approach afterward.
"We’re aggressive. We’ve been aggressive all year," he said following the loss. "I believed in our guys. We just came up short."
The following season proved the Super Bowl run was not entirely isolated. Chicago went 9-8, defeated the Atlanta Falcons 41-27 in the Wild Card round and reached the Divisional Round before losing 24-17 to the Dallas Cowboys.
But the Bears have not returned to the postseason since.
Miller’s Career Has Taken Him Across the League
Chicago represents only the latest chapter of a coaching career that stretches well beyond Miller’s current team.
From the database era beginning with Season 10, Miller coached six seasons with the Carolina Panthers, 10 with the Kansas City Chiefs and one with Jacksonville before eventually taking over the Bears in Season 30.
His best Carolina team went 12-4 in Season 11 and reached the conference championship. With Kansas City, Miller posted a 13-3 record in Season 23 and made several postseason appearances, including another conference championship run in Season 21.
Since Season 10, Miller’s teams have compiled a 184-191 regular-season record and a 7-11 playoff record. Those totals do not include the earlier portion of his career, which contains the accomplishment that still defines his résumé: the Season 8 championship.
His Bears tenure tells its own story. Across six seasons, Chicago is 43-59 under Miller, but buried inside that overall record is a Super Bowl appearance and another postseason run.
That is why Season 36 is difficult to evaluate simply by looking at the last two years.
Miller has already shown that the Bears can change quickly.
Three Questions Entering Season 36
The first is whether Caleb Williams can elevate the offense back toward its Season 32 level. Chicago averaged fewer than 19 points per game last season, and while the flashes in camp are encouraging, the Bears need those moments to become consistent once the games count.
The second is whether the offense can replace Moore while finally establishing a dependable ground game. Odunze and Burden give Williams young receiving talent, while Swift and Monangai offer the potential for far greater balance than Chicago displayed last season. The offensive line has also received both financial and draft investment.
The third is whether the defense can stay healthy enough for its offseason changes to matter. Bryant’s knee injury is an early setback, and several defenders have dealt with injuries during camp. At the same time, Thieneman, Bush, van den Berg and Woods are giving Miller additional options as the depth chart takes shape.
Season 36 Outlook
The Chicago Bears do not need to look very far into their past to remember what contention feels like.
Season 32 is still recent enough that Williams, Odunze and several of the players who experienced that run remain part of the roster. Mark Miller is still the coach who took a three-win team and, two seasons later, had it playing for a championship.
But recent history cuts the other way, too.
Chicago has followed that Super Bowl appearance with records of 9-8, 7-10 and 7-10. Season 35 was particularly frustrating because the Bears started 5-1 before losing nine of their final 11 games and each of their last six.
That makes Season 36 feel less like the beginning of another rebuild and more like a test of whether the foundation from that Super Bowl team still exists.
Williams is showing encouraging signs. The receiving corps is younger. The offensive line has been reinforced. The defense has added veterans and a first-round safety who is already making plays.
Miller has taken Chicago from the bottom to the Super Bowl once before.
Season 36 will tell us whether he can make the Bears believe in that climb again.
