Step 1 in Bears' 'Take the North' mission is taking down Vikings
When Ryan Poles became the Bears’ general manager in 2022, he laid out a mission statement to ‘‘take the North and never give it back.’’ It sounded good, and it would look great on a T-shirt if the Bears had done some damage in the NFC North.
Instead, after three consecutive last-place finishes, it haunts them.
The NFC North is arguably the most rigorous division in the NFL, and the Lions and Packers have been title contenders in recent seasons. But the first step for the Bears to ‘‘take the North’’ is to establish definitively that they’re ahead of the Vikings, whom they visit Sunday.
Head coach Ben Johnson said some things about the NFC North at his introductory news conference in January, too, calling it ‘‘the toughest division in football’’ and musing about going against the Lions’ Dan Campbell and the Vikings’ Kevin O’Connell, as well as taking aim at the Packers by mentioning how much he “enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a year.”
In Johnson’s three seasons as the Lions’ offensive coordinator, they went 5-1 each against the Vikings, Packers and Bears and won the division twice. By leaving for the Bears, he went from the summit of Mount North to its foot, but he was in no mood Friday to zoom out for a look at how steep the climb is.
‘‘I probably don’t look at it from that lens,’’ Johnson said. ‘‘I’m very much day by day and week by week. Any given week, there’s a path to victory, and I don’t think it matters who your opponent is.
‘‘We don’t control who’s on our schedule, other than you’re going to have your division [rivals] twice a year, and we focus on those games when they come to us. So I’ve been saying all along this week, ‘We’re 0-2 in the division right now.’ This is a big one for us. We desperately need this win.’’
The Bears’ first game this season against the Vikings was Johnson’s debut as a head coach and was a harsh reminder of how much work the Bears needed to do. Johnson was smoldering after his team blew a 17-6 lead in the fourth quarter and lost 27-24.
The Bears do desperately need this one, as Johnson said, and it surely won’t come easily.
The Vikings are in transition under quarterback J.J. McCarthy and have been up-and-down in their 4-5 start, but they are no joke. They rallied to beat the Bears in the season opener at Soldier Field, beat the Lions two weeks ago and had one-score losses to the Steelers, Eagles and Ravens.
Moreover, they rarely have been a pushover for the Bears. The Vikings have beaten them in eight of their last nine meetings — the Bears’ lone victory was 12-10 in 2023 — and have outpaced them in their dueling rebuilds.
The Bears rebooted with Poles and Matt Eberflus in 2022, and the Vikings hired GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell in the same offseason. Since then, the Bears have gone 21-39 and fired Eberflus last season, while the Vikings have gone 38-22 and given O’Connell a second contract.
During that time, amid plenty of their own rebuilding challenges, the Vikings have gone 12-8 in the North and gone to the playoffs twice. The Bears have had the worst division record in the NFL during that span at 3-17 and haven’t gotten close.
Both teams hit the draft looking for a quarterback in 2024, when the Bears chose Caleb Williams first overall and the Vikings took McCarthy 10th. McCarthy suffered a knee injury and missed his entire rookie season, and Williams’ didn’t go so well, either, under the poor guidance of Eberflus and former offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.
Williams ranks 20th in the NFL this season with a 92.2 passer rating. McCarthy, who will be making his fifth career start Sunday, missed five games because of a sprained ankle and is at 65.8.
Poles leveled up at head coach, it seems, by replacing Eberflus with Johnson. Everything about the way Johnson has operated so far indicates the Bears are in good hands for the first time since Lovie Smith.
Quarterback and head coach are key areas in which the Bears need to put themselves on the same footing as the rest of the division. The better they are at those two spots, the better their long-term chances in the North.
O’Connell, Campbell and LaFleur all are more accomplished than Johnson, but he appears to be very much in their weight class. Williams, meanwhile, has more experience and is playing better than McCarthy, and the Bears need it to stay that way.
This is the Bears’ time to begin proving their legitimacy. The first part of the schedule was favorable to them, especially with Johnson and Williams acclimating to each other, but the second half is a beast. The Vikings and Browns are their only remaining opponents with losing records, and the Bears will visit the defending champion Eagles in two weeks, in addition to playing the 49ers, Packers (twice) and Lions.
The best way to measure the Bears’ progress is to test them against stronger competition. If the growth has been real, it’ll show against better teams, too. But it starts with handling the Vikings on the road.