Windy City Gridiron
This summer, I took the opportunity to survey the landscape of Chicago Bears rivalries entering the 2025 NFL season. This included a ranking of the team’s (or fanbase’s) ten biggest rivals, with three honorable mentions thrown in for good measure:
My ranking took a number of factors into consideration, but now that the we are well into the new season, I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit these rivalries and assess how each has been affected by the changing landscape of the NFL in 2025. While I won’t be re-ranking them at this time, what I will do instead is place each previously named rival team into different categories based on how the rivalry currently seems to be intensifying (or not).
To start, these are teams that seem to have remained neutral in terms of a Bears rivalry. While there hasn’t been enough to drive things into greater hostility, the potential for bitterness is still there and can’t be completely ruled out just yet. In the case of the Steelers, the opportunity will obviously come in week 12 when Aaron Rodgers visits Soldier Field. As for the Jaguars, it will ultimately come down to how the two teams perform over the course of the year with rookie head coaches Ben Johnson and Liam Coen being tied together by the nature of the hiring cycle. Breaking it down further, I’d be tempted to label Pittsburgh as more likely to heat up while Jacksonville would be more likely to cool down.
The Falcons missed the cut on the original rankings but made the honorable mentions by virtue of all the familiar faces that have accumulated in Atlanta under former Bears GM Ryan Pace’s watch. With the two teams not scheduled to play each other this year and no other real catalyst to further tensions, things haven’t had a chance to intensify so this one has cooled significantly.
The Cowboys paid a visit to Chicago back in week 3 in what was the first time back for Matt Eberflus. That… didn’t go well for him. While Dak Prescott has been having a fantastic season for Dallas, he failed to have much success against a Bears defense that really got going in this matchup and Caleb Williams picked apart his former coach’s defensive scheme for his best performance of the season to date. The definitive victory seemed to settle the bad blood and close the book on the Matt Eberflus era in Chicago.
The Chiefs have found themselves after the release of Taylor Swift’s new album, I mean after Patrick Mahomes’ receivers were able to return to the team following injuries and suspension. Since this rivalry has always been built on the Bears decision to draft Mitch Trubisky over Patrick Mahomes, it’s hard to argue against a gradual cooling without any...
