These two stats show why the Chicago Bears' recent success is not fools' gold

2. The Chicago Bears are beating their recent opponents by a wide margin, and more convincingly than fellow playoff hopefuls

In order to evaluate the quality of the Bears' recent success, it is important to evaluate how other teams have fared against the same competition (especially teams that are projected to be in the playoffs). While their week 4 win over the Rams did not create any waves, skeptics have been quick to dismiss blowouts of the Panthers and Jaguars in weeks 5 and 6, respectively, to 'just beating up on a bad team'

Luckily for the Bears, when it comes to the week 4 win versus LA, their fellow division teams also played the Rams. Detroit went to overtime with LA in week 1, which deserves some nuance as that was the only time of the season the Rams were healthy. However, Green Bay played the Rams the week after the Bears did, and they won by a nearly identical margin: Chicago beat the Rams 24-18 and Green Bay beat the Rams 24-19.

While Green Bay did go on the road, and Chicago did play at home, that's not a sufficient enough reason to completely validate one win and entirely discredit another. Overall, all three NFC North teams did beat the Rams by a basically identical margin.

In week 5, the Bears trounced the Carolina Panthers who came into the week with newfound momentum after switching to Andy Dalton. Their wins against the Raiders and a close loss to the Bengals showed they had some life, that is until they played the Bears and got routed.

The Bears' 36-10 victory over Carolina was the Panthers' second-largest defeat of the season (1st was week 1 against the Saints when Bryce Young started). One week later against another NFC playoff hopeful in Atlanta, Carolina was only down by a touchdown going into the fourth quarter before Kirk Cousins and the Falcons pulled away.

Meanwhile, in London, the Chicago Bears beat Jacksonville by 19 to give them their second-largest defeat of the season. This blowout was nothing to sneeze at either, as the Jags were only one week removed from an offensive outburst leading to a 38-34 win and two weeks removed from nearly stealing a road victory in Houston against CJ Stroud and the Texans.

All in all, the Bears' collective performances over the past 3 weeks are not anything to sneeze at. Had the Bears been winning every game similar to how they won games last year, i.e., in low-scoring nailbiters, no one would be this excited. However, it is the manner in which they have beaten bad teams convincingly while steadying growth on offense that has everyone justifiably excited about the second half of the season. Time will tell if the Bears will sustain this momentum or if harder opponents later will expose certain flaws in the roster, but for now, there is no doubt that the Bears are live in the NFC playoff race.