The Chicago Bears kept winning without Caleb Williams, and they did it Sunday with Tyson Bagent at quarterback and a defense that made the New York Jets look stuck in place. Chicago beat New York 23-12 and controlled every part of the game long before the final whistle.
That is why the Bears are suddenly part of the Nfc South Standings conversation, even though the standings question belongs to another division: the search interest is really about whether this team is for real after stringing together results with a backup quarterback. Chicago outgained the Jets 492-157, a plus-335 margin that was its largest since Week 16 of 1979, and the Bears finished with 34 first downs while New York managed seven. The Jets ran 32 plays. The Bears did not punt.
The numbers were lopsided because Chicago kept extending drives. The Bears put together six possessions of double-digit plays and another nine-play touchdown march, which is how a team can win comfortably even after giving the ball away twice. New York never found a rhythm, and one 58-yard garbage-time deep shot accounted for 37% of its total yardage. The rest of the afternoon belonged to Chicago’s front and its pursuit.
That defense is starting to look like the real story. Through four weeks, Chicago ranked fourth in defensive EPA per play against at -0.15 and first in EPA per dropback against at -0.27. Those are not empty numbers when they come with a game in which the Jets were held to 157 total yards and seven first downs. Devin Bush called it one of the easiest NFL games he ever played in and said he was not sore at all. Xavier Woods described it more bluntly as a pretty good ass-kicking.
The friction is that the Bears were not clean. They turned it over twice and still never let the game slip, which is the sort of contradiction that usually exposes an overmatched team rather than a contender. Instead, Chicago kept leaning on a defense that has turned early-season skepticism into production and on a quarterback room that has already produced three different winners to start the season. Caleb Williams has missed the previous two weeks with a hamstring injury, and his return will matter because it will be the first real test of whether this level of control survives when the Bears are forced to change again.
For now, the answer is simple. Chicago is winning games with depth at quarterback and a defense that is doing more than holding the line. It is driving the result.
