​The Chicago Bears were decisively ahead of schedule in their rebuild during Ben Johnson’s first season as head coach. After winning five games the year before, they captured the division title and earned the No. 2 seed in the NFC. They knocked off the Green Bay Packers in the Wild Card round and nearly reached the NFC Championship Game. They return many of their offensive starters and have fortified the defense with veterans such as Devin Bush and Coby Bryant. Given all they accomplished last season, you would expect NFL media to take the Bears seriously. Yet that hasn’t been the case for First Take’s Kevin Clark. In a recent episode, Clark released a tiered list of teams he believed could contend for a Super Bowl, dividing them into three groups. The first group consisted of the favorites, which included the Los Angeles Rams and the Seattle Seahawks. The second group was labeled the contenders, featuring the Cincinnati Bengals, Baltimore Ravens, Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, Denver Broncos, Buffalo Bills, and New England Patriots. The final group was described as maybe contenders, which encompassed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions, Houston Texans, and Green Bay Packers. One team conspicuously absent from Clark’s list was the Bears. Of the sixteen teams he considered, he did not view Chicago as a contender for 2026. It’s notable that teams such as the Bengals, Lions, and even the Packers earned inclusion while the Bears did not, a discrepancy many observers found frustrating. Then there are the Cowboys, who routinely mount their own bid to stay in the conversation as legitimate contenders.
For Cincinnati, injuries have marred Joe Burrow in two of the last three seasons, a factor we can’t entirely overlook. Even when he’s able to play a full season, the Bengals have struggled to reach the playoffs consistently. In 2024, Burrow did play all 17 games, yet Cincinnati still failed to secure a postseason bid. Regardless, the franchise hasn’t advanced to the playoffs since their 2022 run to the AFC Championship, and they followed that with a chaotic period of free-agent splashes this offseason without yet proving their renewed strength on the field. The Lions, meanwhile, were pegged early in the offseason as a potential “worst-to-first” candidate in the NFC North. Detroit enjoyed a strong stretch in 2023 but has since faded. They reached the NFC Championship that season, then fell in the Divisional Round in 2024 and missed the playoffs entirely last year.
Now, let’s turn to Chicago’s hometown favorite, the Packers. Green Bay hasn’t reached the NFC Championship since 2020 and has not advanced beyond the Wild Card in the last two seasons. The irony is that the Packers appeared on Clark’s list while the Bears did not, a distinction that seems especially harsh given Chicago’s success in head-to-head games against Green Bay, including two victories over the Packers last season. From a SEO perspective, listing Green Bay as a contender while omitting the Bears only underscores the Bears’ irregular elevation in national discourse. With the Bears firmly positioned to leverage their offseason momentum, a fairer assessment from national outlets would place them in the conversation with the teams genuinely poised to contend in 2026, rather than relegating them to the margins.