The NFL is ready to make the Chicago Bears one of its marquee attractions again—and for good reason. After a renaissance 2025 season fueled by Caleb Williams' heroics and Ben Johnson's magnetic charisma, the Bears are no longer just a team; they're a hot ticket. Through the league's leaked schedule release, Chicago is a centerpiece, a hopeful tool to sell the professional game to the widest possible audience.
But let's be clear: this isn't normal for the Bears' customary standards. Chicago isn't used to this sort of mantle. Decades of futility have dampened local expectations, turning the Bears into a perennial bottom-feeder. No one takes them seriously. They're supposed to be an afterthought at best and a punchline at worst—not a thrilling entity that receives top billing.
Yet here we are. The Bears are popular, and that makes them an untapped well of potential attention and ratings galore. A cornerstone-of-the-league Bears team is one of the NFL's modern white whales—a voyage that hasn't seemed realistic most seasons. It's hard to promote a mediocre team, after all, let alone interrogate whether that effort is worth the trouble. That's precisely why Chicago will play on Thanksgiving Day on the road against the NFC North rival Detroit Lions and on Christmas Day host the organization's classic antagonist, the Green Bay Packers.
Those two holiday special slots are usually reserved for the NFL's cream of the crop—the teams showcasing the most entertaining football, the ones that have every last drop of spectacle wrung out of them like a wet dish rag. The Bears, with many envisioning Williams and Johnson taking them to the stratosphere, are now one of those teams. They have expectations, a whole-hearted belief. For the first time in years, there's real enthusiasm for what they could be capable of. Few have ever seen the Bears with a star quarterback. This is all a new frontier that has yet to be pioneered.
As some Bears fans feel, that's just the beginning of the ride. For sports fans and apparel enthusiasts alike, this season promises to be one for the history books—and the perfect excuse to gear up in Bears colors.