History of the Chicago Bears

After the team opened the season with a home victory over the Rock Island Independents, company founder and namesake Gene Staley made Halas a lucrative offer.

"[9][8] Over the next few years, the Bears were ranked among the elite teams in the NFL, but could never capture a championship title since the league did not have a playoff system; instead, it had a somewhat controversial scheduling formula that led to uneven standings and contentious champions.

The tour began on Thanksgiving at Wrigley Field as the Chicago Cardinals held Grange to just 36 yards in his professional debut, with the city rivals battling to a 0–0 tie.

The Chicago Bears of the 1930s are remembered for being led by a ferocious tandem of Bronko Nagurski and Red Grange, playing in the newly inaugurated NFL Championship Game four times and claiming the league title twice.

A complex scheme that required an athletic player with quick decision skills led Halas to recruit Columbia University quarterback Sid Luckman, who turned the position into an engine for a high powered, time-consuming scoring machine.

In this span, the Bears went to five NFL Championships and won four of them, even as head coach George Halas temporarily left the organization to serve in World War II from 1943 to 1945.

Their success continued into 1950, as they began the new decade in style by finishing 9–3, enough to earn them a tie for the Western Division with the Los Angeles Rams, whom they played against in the Conference Playoff.

In 1956, Driscoll led the Bears through a solid 9–2–1 season, as they beat their fellow Midwest rival, the Detroit Lions, by a half a game for the 1956 Western Division Championship.

The Bears' rookie success hit a pinnacle in 1963, when they broke the Green Bay Packers' three-year stranglehold on the Western Division and the NFL by posting an 11–1–2 record.

He selected running back Gale Sayers (nicknamed the "Kansas Comet") and linebacker Dick Butkus in the first round of the draft to improve the Bears' offense and defense.

Meanwhile, Mike Ditka abruptly retired at the end of the season, dissatisfied with Halas' unwillingness to spend money on talent; he would become an assistant coach for the Dallas Cowboys under Tom Landry.

In 1971, ABC aired the television film Brian's Song, which starred James Caan as Piccolo and Billy Dee Williams as Gale Sayers, and detailed the friendship between the two running backs.

The sport, which once lagged behind baseball and college football in terms of popularity, was seeing a huge rise with the advent of the Super Bowl, with bigger venues being needed to support fans.

Behind the performance of Payton, the Bears won their final six games of the season to finish second place with a 9–5 record, which landed them in the NFC Wild Card spot.

On December 16, 1979, as the Bears earned that spot on the final day of the season with a 42–6 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals, team president George "Mugs" Halas Jr. died of a heart attack at the age of 54.

As with earlier innovations involving the T-formation with Clark Shaughnessy and later creative ideas with George Allen, the pieces began to fit into place for a championship run.

The 1982 season was Ditka's first as the Bears' head coach, as he began his rebuilding program by drafting Jim McMahon from Brigham Young University with the intention of making him a franchise quarterback.

[19] The season brought players to the national spotlight such as William "The Refrigerator" Perry, Mike Singletary, Jim McMahon, Dan Hampton, and Walter Payton.

In both games, safety Mike Brown capped remarkable comebacks (the Bears trailed 28–9 in the third quarter against San Francisco, and 21–7 with seconds remaining against Cleveland) by returning an interception in overtime for a touchdown.

The Bears had a final chance to force overtime, but Rex Grossman's 4th-and-1 pass intended for Muhsin Muhammad fell incomplete with less than a minute left in the game.

The team began to re-establish their clockwork performance during the next three games, including one where Hester returned two kicks for touchdowns against the St. Louis Rams, and an overtime thriller against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where Grossman threw for over 300 yards.

The Bears posted a winning record again (9–7), but ended up being one game behind the eventual NFC North champion, the Minnesota Vikings, and failed to qualify for the playoffs after losing 31–24 to the Houston Texans in Week 17.

As the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome's inflatable roof had collapsed the week before, the two teams had to play at TCF Bank Stadium at the University of Minnesota campus in frigid winter weather.

Although their own playoff chances were unharmed by the loss in Green Bay (they had already gotten the number-two NFC seed and a first-round bye with their 11–5 regular season record), that game ultimately proved fatal because of their inability to remove the Packers from postseason contention.

After the Seahawks gained a surprise division title with a 7–9 season record and an even more miraculous playoff victory over the defending Super Bowl XLIV champion, the New Orleans Saints, they headed to Chicago in the divisional round.

Caleb Hanie came in and tried to rally the team, but hammered by the Packers defense, threw a fatal interception that was caught by nose tackle B. J. Raji and returned for a touchdown.

Emery's first move as general manager was giving Matt Forte the franchise tag,[51] as well as acquiring Pro Bowl MVP Brandon Marshall from the Miami Dolphins, reuniting him with Cutler.

[69] After Jay Cutler went down with injuries, Brian Hoyer started for the team until he suffered a broken arm, which led to third-string quarterback Matt Barkley playing.

[100] Poles released veterans Tarik Cohen, Danny Trevathan, and Eddie Goldman, while also allowing Allen Robinson, Akiem Hicks, and James Daniels to walk away from the Bears in free agency.

[105] On January 12, the Bears hired former Big Ten Conference commissioner Kevin Warren as their new President/CEO replacing Ted Phillips, who retired after the 2022 season after 40 years with the organization.