Bears' 11-6 2025 Season Outpaced Their Scoring Margin, Model Says

Chicago scored more than it allowed but posted only a middling point differential, and sustainability models say the 11-6 record ran slightly ahead of what that margin supports.

Published: September 12, 2026 · Figures as of September 12, 2026

Asked: What does Chicago's 2025 performance tell us about how strong the Bears were?

Chicago's 11-6 outran a middling scoring margin, and the model says that gap won't self-correct much further

The Bears finished 2025 at 11-6, but the underlying scoring says a good-not-great team, not an 11-win team's process: they scored 25.9 points a game (9th of 32, above the league's 23.0 rate) while allowing 24.4 (23rd of 32, worse than that same 23.0 league rate). The result is a point differential of +26 for the season, tied for 15th of 32 — middle of the pack, not top-tier company like Seattle (+191), the Rams (+172) or New England (+170).

What the models add on top of the record itself:

• Team sustainability (v1, as of September 12, 2026, confidence 1.0) reads Chicago's 2025 record as running about 1.9 wins ahead of what its scoring margins support — an 0.647 win rate against a margin-implied rate near 0.536 — but that gap is read as "in line," meaning it sits inside the normal band of noise the model expects rather than the "expect fallback" zone where reversion is the actual finding. So some of the 11 wins outran the point differential, but not by enough for the model to call the record inflated.
• Power rating (v2, same date) carries Chicago into 2026 at +1.3 points versus an average opponent on a neutral field — a modestly above-average team, not one of the league's clear top tier. Its confidence is only 0.5 because this is an offseason carryover from the finished 2025 season with no 2026 games folded in yet, not a fresh in-season read.

Put together: Chicago was a real playoff-caliber team on scoring balance — better offense than defense, a positive but unremarkable point differential — and the record sat a little ahead of that without crossing into "the record was mostly luck" territory. Confidence: Medium. The record, scoring ranks and differential are season facts; the sustainability read carries full confidence; the power-rating carryover, by design, hasn't yet seen a single 2026 snap and would move once games are played.