Bears face long road back to the playoffs in these divisional power rankings

The 2025 NFL season is supposed to be the year that things finally go right for the Chicago Bears. Long the hapless, bumbling franchise, they've made moves in recent years that hint at a team ready to finally sit at the grown-ups table: drafting a near-generational quarterback with the first overall pick, investing heavily in an offensive line, and sparing no expense to hire the best and brightest head coach available to mold that quarterback into a superstar.

To be clear, no one is picking them to make a run to the Super Bowl in 2025, but the expectations are cautiously optimistic. For many fans and analysts, the Bears ought to at least squeak into the playoffs as the 6th or 7th seed to call it a successful season. Anything above that would be the cherry on top, allowing the Bears to head into the offseason with genuine momentum rather than the usual fare of hopes and dreams.

But even these restrained expectations of the Bears could prove too lofty in 2025 if the latest divisional power rankings from NFL Media prove accurate. Eric Edholm, a lead NFL writer, compiled a power ranking of the eight NFL divisions and placed the NFC North clearly at the top as the best and toughest division in football.

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Justifying his selection, Edholm gave credit to the Lions, Vikings, and Packers for remaining squarely in playoff contention. Regarding the Lions, he gives them the benefit of the doubt as the back-to-back division champs, not to fall too far after losing both coordinators (Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn) to head coaching jobs.

As for the Bears, Edholm had this to say: "If Johnson can maximize Caleb Williams' effectiveness, the Bears have enough talent to make a playoff run. Chicago was the busiest team in a busy division this offseason, and Johnson's creativity and exacting nature could help change the franchise's trajectory. This is a loaded division, no doubt, so the Bears have their work cut out for them."

It's that simple for the Bears. If Johnson and Williams live up to the hype in 2025, then the Bears will absolutely be in the playoff race even into January, but playing in a brutal division makes it hard to put too much faith in them.

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Make no mistake, no one in the division is likely to fall off in 2025 and make things easier for Chicago. There's likely to be some regression from the insane heights of 2024 for the Lions and Vikings, who won 15 and 14 games, respectively, but both squads will still get double-digit wins. And the Packers will likely top out at 11 wins again in a best-case scenario, but shouldn't fall below .500 for the season.

So if the Bears want to make the playoffs and deliver a strong statement to the rest of the league in Ben Johnson's first year as head coach, they're going to need to recreate the magic of that 2018 season and win a lot of non-divisional matchups because every divisional game is going to be a bare-knuckle fistfight.

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