Bears Fans Seth Rollins & Stacey Dales are SUUUUPER Excited for the ‘26 NFL Season

Put two Bears believers in the same room and the temperature goes up quickly. Guest host Seth Rollins asked NFL Network's Stacey Dales to talk Chicago, and the ask was not subtle.

"Tell me about the Chicago Bears," Rollins said. "Put it in my bloodstream."

Dales did not need much encouragement.

"It all starts with Caleb and Ben," she said. "Caleb is just so special."

Her framing was about the position Ryan Poles put himself in. The Bears general manager landed the first pick and then landed the coach, and what Ben Johnson did with Caleb Williams last season was, in her word, extraordinary. Dales traced the growth from week one all the way to the playoff loss against the Rams and made a claim that will sting Chicago fans in a good way. This team could have been in the NFC Championship game.

The caveat is how they got there. Six comeback victories is thrilling and unsustainable. Dales pointed out that Dennis Allen returns on defense but lost personnel from what had been the top takeaway defense in the league, and that Johnson's offense is built to outscore people badly. The next step is doing it earlier in games instead of in the final four minutes.

Rollins, watching those games as a lifelong Bears fan, described the strangest part of last season, which was learning to expect a win.

"You're so accustomed to losing those games," Rollins said. "You've been conditioned to know that they're going to have that final drive and they're going to fail."

That flipped somewhere around two-thirds of the way through the year. By then, Rollins said, he was not even concerned anymore. Green Bay would jump out to a huge lead and his only thought was how much time was left on the clock, because Williams was going to bring them back.

"It was a crazy jarring experience as a Chicago Bears fan to expect to win when you were playing from behind," Rollins said.

Chicago beat the Packers twice, and Dales noted that Green Bay blew fourth-quarter leads in three games last season. She was at all three, including a week three game in Cleveland. The other two were the losses to the Bears.

Beating the team whose colors Rollins happened to be wearing is exactly the kind of thing that has changed the mood in the city. Dales said there is juice in Chicago now, the sense that good is here to stay for a while. She brought receipts from the building, too. Cole Kmet told her at Halas Hall that the good, better, best mantra felt a little cheesy at first, right up until the winning started. Kevin Byard kept telling her last season that they had the quarterback, that Williams is the Iceman, that he is who he is.

The most useful part of her answer was the specific development. Dales said Williams's biggest jump has been marrying his footwork to the concepts. Three-step drop, five-step drop, bunch formation, jumbo package, 12 or 13 personnel, where the first, second and third looks live. That processing ability lining up with his feet is where the real improvement shows.

And then there is the part that does not show up in a coaching clinic.

"He's going to hit a fadeaway," Dales said. "He's going to dunk it on somebody."

The desk summed it up the way any fan would. When it is time to be Superman, he can put the cape on.