Here’s a quick, convenient look at where the Chicago Bears rank among the NFL in every meaningful statistic heading into Week Six.
The last time we saw a Chicago Bears team open the season at 4-1, they did so through mainstays from the “Monsters of the Midway,” team in 2012, and had a 10-win season to show for it.
Unfortunately for this Bears team some ten years later, experts and pundits have no such “fear” for these monsters. According to Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders, these 2020 Bears own the second-lowest DVOA (-7.4 percent) of any team in NFL history.
The worst of all-time? The Chicago Bears … from 2010.
As promised, here are the worst 4-1 teams in DVOA history (since 1985). This isn't necessarily bad news for Chicago, most of these teams ended up making the playoffs and some (ATL 1995 and 1998) improved significantly after their "slow starts." #DaBears pic.twitter.com/olNOwk12Z7
— Aaron Schatz 🏈 (@FO_ASchatz) October 12, 2020
As we know, the only numbers that truly do talking, in the long run, are wins and losses. Regardless of how it came about, we can still play with numbers to tell a positive story: the only team in the NFL with more wins than the Bears are the Seattle Seahawks. And that’s that.
For the sake of this article, though, a few other numbers matter, too. It’s well-documented that the Bears aren’t a typical 4-1 clubhouse, and today, we can try to sort of glean into the reasons why.
Here, let’s take a look at where the Chicago Bears rank in every meaningful category in one convenient primer, heading into Sunday’s game against the Carolina Panthers.