The Carolina Panthers host the Chicago Bears on Sunday in a Week 1 NFL showdown on FOX, and the market has the Bears as 3-point underdogs despite what Chicago did a year ago. It is an early read on two teams that both reached the playoffs in 2025, but it is also a test of whether Carolina’s offseason spending can finally catch up with its results.
Ben Johnson’s first season as head coach ended with the Bears winning the NFC North for the first time since 2018 and taking their first playoff victory since 2010. Chicago also showed a knack for finishing games, with seven wins including the playoffs when trailing with two minutes left in the fourth quarter. That record is one reason the line is tight, and why this Bears game has been framed as one that could turn on a field goal.
Carolina’s case is harder to square. The Panthers returned to the postseason for the first time since 2017 and claimed their first division title since 2015 after coming out on top in a three-way tiebreaker, but they did it with an 8-9 record and numbers that rarely travel well into the next season. They ranked 27th in scoring offense at 18.3 points per game and 27th in total offense at 295.6 yards per game, the fewest by a playoff team since the 2010 Bears averaged 289.4.
That is where the $208 million Carolina spent on free agents this offseason comes in. The Panthers clearly acted like a team trying to buy a faster turnaround, but their 2025 profile says the gap was not talent alone; it was also how often the offense stalled and how a minus-69 point differential still somehow produced a division title. The spending raises the ceiling, but it does not erase what the roster already showed.
So Sunday is less a referendum on either team’s 2025 badge than on which version holds up first: the Bears team that kept finding late answers, or the Panthers team that survived on narrow margins and then paid to improve them. If the game does come down to a field goal, it will say more about how thin the line is between last year’s surprise and this year’s expectation than any September record ever could.
