Bears 2024 expectations: What's reasonable for a deep team with a rookie QB? (2024)

Numbers aren’t remembered in football the way they are in baseball. Football doesn’t have 755 or 56 or 2,131. Most counting stats will eventually be broken because the season has been expanded to 17 games.

There is one number, though, that inevitably comes up every year — 28, the number of interceptions Peyton Manning threw as a rookie.

It’s usually used as a reminder when a rookie is struggling. “Hey, Peyton Manning threw 28 interceptions as a rookie and turned out to be one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time!”

Manning has certainly been the exception, but Andrew Luck threw 18 picks as a rookie. Cam Newton threw 17. So did Trevor Lawrence.

A rookie quarterback is going to make mistakes. He’s going to see defenses he’s never seen before. He’ll be facing athletes he’s never faced before. And that brings us to the 2024 Chicago Bears, a team talented enough to make the playoffs, but one that will have to navigate all that comes with a rookie quarterback.

What are fair expectations for the Bears?

C.J. Stroud set a new standard last season with his performance, leading the Houston Texans to the playoffs. Is he an outlier or should that start to change expectations?

“C.J. did a wonderful job,” Bears coach Matt Eberflus said at the NFL owners’ meetings. “The offensive staff and DeMeco (Ryans) did a wonderful job last year with those guys. Our situation is our situation. Everything is unique, every building is unique in the NFL. Every situation is unique. And we’re excited about working with our situation and making it the best we can.”

With seven teams making the playoffs, it’s easier for a team with a rookie quarterback to play into January. And we’ve seen QBs step in and play at a high level from the jump.

We’ve also seen how it can take some time.

Later this month, we’ll see the 16th and 17th quarterbacks drafted No. 1 and No. 2 since 2011, when the collective bargaining agreement included a rookie wage scale.

Of the 15 selected in the top two picks over the last 13 years, only three made the playoffs — Luck, Robert Griffin III and Stroud.

Let’s look back at those 15 quarterbacks, how they fared, what they were drafted into and how it could affect the hopes for the 2024 Bears.

Wins

Quarterback wins can be a controversial statistic, but it’s a starting point, and Luck is the only No. 1 or 2 pick to win double-digit games as a rookie in that span.

If we expand outside the parameters of the top two picks, Russell Wilson and Dak Prescott, a pair of mid-round picks, won double-digit games and made the playoffs as rookies. But this list includes several players who played much better after Year 1 — Carson Wentz was an MVP hopeful before getting hurt in 2017, Newton won the 2015 MVP award, Baker Mayfield went 11-5 in Year 3, and Joe Burrow went to a Super Bowl.

Passer rating

Speaking of statistics that might not be the best indicator of a quarterback’s performance, the median passer rating in this group is 84, slightly below what Justin Fields put up the past two seasons.

Luck ranked 11th as a rookie in QBR and 15th in EPA (expected points added) per pass. Stroud’s season certainly looks like an outlier. How would the Bears look in 2024 if their rookie QB’s passer rating finished in the mid-80s? With a strong supporting cast, that might be enough for a playoff appearance.

The Bears will be the fourth team in the last 14 years to select a quarterback in the top two picks coming off a season with more than five wins. They also bring back two Pro Bowlers and traded for another (Keenan Allen). Caleb Williams, the expected No. 1 pick, will find a much better situation than most quarterbacks who are picked first.

Year before a rookie QB

The top four teams on the list all traded up into the top two, but only Griffin in 2012 took his team to the playoffs. Often, even rookie QBs who struggle can still improve on a team’s win total — that’s how bad teams were the previous season.

Win change

Two more wins over last season would put the Bears at 9-8, which would be in the playoffs or on the precipice. The 9-8 Saints and Seahawks didn’t make it last season.

Williams will come to a team with a new offensive coaching staff but enters a building where the GM and head coach have worked together for two seasons. It’s rare for a rookie quarterback picked in the top two to be with a non-first-year head coach, but things have gone quite poorly for the experienced coaches.

Coach year

Chairman George McCaskey wouldn’t address the contract situations of Eberflus and general manager Ryan Poles in Orlando, but things would have to go truly awry for the Bears to find themselves back in the same ugly cycle of having to find a new coach for a young quarterback. However, it’s not that uncommon.

Of the 15 quarterbacks picked in the top two since 2011, Kyler Murray, Bryce Young, Zach Wilson, Burrow, Lawrence and Stroud are with the team that drafted them, and Wilson won’t be for long. Young, Lawrence and Murray already have new coaches. Six coaches on this list were fired in season or after the season when a rookie QB was drafted.

For different reasons, John Fox and Matt Nagy were fired the year after the Bears drafted a quarterback in the first round. With this roster, and the scouting reports that have anointed Williams as having the potential to be a difference-making quarterback, the franchise should be able to avoid that fate with Eberflus.

This is the unusual space the Bears find themselves in. They have reason to believe that the No. 1 pick will be coming into a better foundation than most, if not all, the top rookie QBs drafted over the past decade.

Is that foundation strong enough — from players to coaches to support staff — to manage the ups and downs that come with a rookie signal caller?

BetMGM has set the Bears’ over/under for wins in 2024 at 8.5, which seems fair. A nine-win season would align with what we’ve seen from other teams in similar situations. It would put the Bears in position to play deep into January. And that kind of improvement could set them up for 2025 when the quarterback would be in Year 2, and the bar can be raised even higher.

Williams’ surrounding cast, and continuity with the coaching staff, will be rare. That should raise expectations for 2024. It could temper them, too.

He doesn’t need to be 2023 Stroud, but he does need to show promise that he can be the quarterback who allows the Bears to talk about championships.

(Photo of Cole Kmet and Matt Eberflus: Matt Marton / USA Today)

Kevin Fishbain is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Chicago Bears. He spent the 2013-16 seasons on the Bears beat for Shaw Media publications, including the Northwest Herald, Daily Chronicle and Joliet Herald-News. Previously, he covered the NFL from 2010 to 2012 for Pro Football Weekly. Follow Kevin on Twitter @kfishbain