July has turned the NFL schedule conversation toward training camps, and a new division ranking has put the Bears at the top of the NFC North entering the 2026 season. The timing matters because this is the point when preseason judgments start to harden, and the first read on the North now says Chicago is back in front.
That is a sharp turn for a division that spent 2025 producing more doubt than certainty. Ben Johnson is coming off a fantastic debut season as head coach, Caleb Williams is on the cover of Madden NFL 27, and the Bears now carry the label of reigning division champion. That gives them the clearest starting point in a race that is already being shaped by the offseason moves around them.
Detroit is the team pushing hardest against that order. The Lions finished 9-8 in 2025 and tied for last in the NFC North, then moved quickly to change the look of the offense after John Morton was gone as offensive coordinator. Dan Campbell took over the play-calling duties, Drew Petzing arrived as the new offensive coordinator, and the front office added center Cade Mays, Larry Borom and Ben Bartch for help on the interior. Detroit also brought in Juice Scruggs in a deal that sent David Montgomery to Houston, a sign that Jahmyr Gibbs is now expected to carry the backfield, while Roger McCreary, Chuck Clark and Christian Izien were added to the secondary.
That is where the ranking gets interesting. Chicago is being rewarded for finishing on top, but Detroit is the team that looks most dangerous if the fixes hold. The Lions are trying to answer an offense that lost its coordinator and a defense that needed more help at multiple spots, and they did it with enough changes to suggest a real reset rather than a cosmetic one. If the new structure works, the gap between first and last in the division could be much smaller than the label on paper suggests.
Green Bay is going through its own reboot, and it is less about polish than a full reset. Matt LaFleur trimmed the receiving corps down to players who understand and embrace their roles, then used offseason activities to reinstall his scheme as if it were Year 1. The Packers also have a backfield cloud hanging over them after Josh Jacobs’ May arrest created an uncertain outlook, and that comes on top of a 2025 finish that never fully delivered when it mattered most. They failed in the biggest late-season moments at Denver and in two losses in Chicago, which is the kind of finish that can force a coach to strip everything down and start again.
Minnesota, meanwhile, spent the entire offseason playing the What If game, which is another way of saying the division still has unanswered questions all over it. The next real checkpoint is training camp, when the talk stops being about rankings and becomes about who is healthy, who has been installed cleanly and who can actually hold up once the games start. For now, the July NFL schedule picture leaves the Bears on top and the rest of the NFC North trying to prove the order is wrong.
