Rich Weighs In on a Possible Bears Move to Indiana and Chicago’s 9.5 Win Total Line

The Bears might end up in Indiana. What they will never be is the Indiana Bears.

Chicago's owner acknowledged he does not know where the new stadium lands. Hammond, Indiana is live. So is Arlington Heights, Illinois. Plenty of people think Indiana wins. The one thing he committed to is the name on the front of the jersey, and that stays Chicago.

Rich has no problem with the geography loophole, because the league is already full of them. The Jets and Giants play in East Rutherford, New Jersey, a different state entirely, and nobody has renamed them. Getting from the southern edge of San Francisco down to Santa Clara is its own expedition, which is why flying into San Jose for a 49ers game makes far more sense than flying into SFO.

Still, staying in Illinois would be the tidy outcome, especially since the Bears bought the Arlington Heights site three years ago and razed a horse track to do it. The alternative use for that land, per Rich, is pickleball courts. Which, honestly, might be the way of the future.

The louder story is what Ben Johnson keeps saying out loud. In a feature in The Athletic, Johnson said he wants the record for highest-scoring offense in a season, and he knows exactly what the 2013 Broncos averaged. He wants blowouts. He wants shutouts. People around the league are taking offense, which is entirely the point.

"He is unapologetically placing a target right there on his back and that of his team," Rich said, and the show landed on the correct category for a coach like that. Red ass. Johnson has a way of doing things and does not care what anyone thinks about it.

Pieces exist to back the talk. Caleb Williams is the quarterback, Dennis Allen runs the defense that would have to supply the shutout half of the promise, and Johnson has been talking up Luther Burden, whose traits drew an Amon-Ra St. Brown comparison. Beast was the word used.

None of this comes out of nowhere. Chicago won the division last year and came close to the NFC Championship game, and almost nobody saw it coming, least of all after the start. The Bears nearly pitched a shutout in the Monday night opener before J.J. McCarthy torched them in the fourth quarter, then went to Detroit and got hit for 50. That is 0-2, and it did not end the way 0-2 usually ends.

The 2026 slate has traps in it. Chicago opens at Carolina in a game likely to fly under the radar. Philadelphia comes to town on a Monday night wanting a piece of a team that punked the Eagles in front of their own home crowd the day after Thanksgiving. There is a trip to Green Bay that all of Wisconsin has circled, plus New England on a Thursday night, Seattle and Tampa.

Chicago's win total sits at nine and a half.

Take the over. Blowouts and shutouts, or nothing.