Chicago Bears

Chicago Bears, American professional football team based in Chicago that plays in the National Football Conference (NFC) of the National Football League (NFL). The Bears are one of football’s most successful franchises, having won eight NFL championships and one Super Bowl.

(Read Walter Camp’s 1903 Britannica essay on inventing American football.)

The franchise that became the Bears was founded by businessman A.E. Staley in 1920 and was first known as the Decatur (Illinois) Staleys. George Halas became player-coach of the new team, which he relocated to Chicago in 1921 after Staley handed the young franchise over to him. (Halas, affectionately known as “Papa Bear,” prowled the sidelines as head coach until 1968.) The team won the American Professional Football Association (APFA) championship in its first season in Chicago, and it was renamed the Bears in 1922, the same year the APFA became the NFL. The early Chicago teams established a rivalry with the Green Bay Packers, which became one of the sport’s most storied feuds. Led by a dominant rushing attack that featured future Hall of Fame backs Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski, the Bears captured NFL championships in 1932 and 1933, the former of which was won in the first playoff game in league history, a 9–0 victory over the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans. In the 1940s the Bears won four more championships (1940, 1941, 1943, 1946), largely because of the efforts of quarterback Sid Luckman, a future member of the Hall of Fame. The innovative T-formation offense that Luckman ran, which utilized two running backs and set men in motion before the play, was an immediate sensation and became the dominant offense in the NFL.

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The Bears won another title in 1963 and drafted two all-time greats in 1965: linebacker Dick Butkus and running back Gale Sayers. While Butkus and Sayers went on to dominate the game on an individual level, the Bears did not advance to the playoffs during either of their careers. The dry spell ended when the Bears drafted running back Walter Payton in 1975, starting a decade of dominance. Payton went on to break Jim Brown’s record for all-time rushing yards (which was in turn broken by Emmitt Smith in 2002) and was elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993. Behind Payton the Bears won four division titles and their only Super Bowl (1985). Led by head coach Mike Ditka, a larger-than-life personality who had starred as a tight end for the Bears of the 1960s, and iconoclastic quarterback Jim McMahon (the “punky QB”), the 1985 Bears team was especially noteworthy for its overpowering defense that—after serving as the catalyst for a 15–1 regular-season record—allowed only 10 total points in the team’s three postseason games. The team became a national sensation with the release of “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” a rap song (and accompanying music video) that featured members of the team boasting of going to the Super Bowl, which was confidently released before the end of the regular season.

The Bears experienced limited success in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, but they advanced to the Super Bowl in 2006, where they lost to the Indianapolis Colts. Following the 2010 regular season, the Bears returned to the NFC championship game, where they were defeated by their rivals the Green Bay Packers. The Bears muddled through the following four seasons without making the playoffs, and in 2013 and 2014 they reached a nadir for a team that prides itself on its historical “Monsters of the Midway” defensive reputation: Chicago allowed the two largest opponents’ point totals in franchise history during those seasons. While the team’s defense improved in the following two seasons, the Bears nevertheless remained one of the worst teams in the NFL. In 2016 Chicago posted a 3–13 record, which equaled a team record for most losses in a season.

After four consecutive seasons of double-digit losses, the team hired Matt Nagy as head coach in 2018. Nagy guided the team to a seven-win improvement in his first season at the helm, leading Chicago to a division title that was followed by a narrow loss in the team’s opening playoff game. The Bears’ offense that Nagy had revitalized in 2018 struggled in 2019 and the team won just eight games that season, missing the playoffs. The following year Chicago again finished the regular season with an 8–8 record, though this time the team qualified for the playoffs. However, the Bears lost in the first round. In the 2021 NFL draft, the Bears selected quarterback Justin Fields. During his first year with the team, he struggled with injuries, and the team finished with a losing record, 6–11. During the offseason Nagy was replaced by Matt Eberflus as head coach. After a disappointing 3–14 finish in 2022, Chicago improved the following season, posting a 7–10 record.