Colin Cowherd: Why the Bears Win Total Will Go Over 9.5

On this week’s show, I was joined by ‘First Things First’ co-host Danny Parkins to talk NFL futures and win totals.

Chicago Bears, 9.5 total wins. Is that the easiest bet of the offseason?

The Bears have added Coby Bryant, Devin Bush, Garrett Bradbury at center. Caleb’s going to get better in his third year. And by the way, they play the NFC South and the AFC East next season. They’re beating the Dolphins and the Jets.

Yeah, give me Bears over 9.5 wins.

Danny Parkins on the Bears’ Regression

The regression case is simple: they had seven comeback wins, they led the league in takeaways, and their left guard, center, right guard, and right tackle all played over 90% of the snaps. You’re going to have some offensive line injuries. And obviously the Dalman injury – you’ve already lost your center out of that equation. So it’s going to be a different offensive line, even if they’re bringing the other three pieces back.

But Caleb is going to be better. He just is.

Colston Loveland and Luther Burden were accelerating at the end of the year. Loveland became, what, the second-best tight end in football? I think so.

I think the Bears have an incredibly high offensive ceiling this year. I think they’re going into the year believing they can be the best offense in football. Now, probably a third of the league believes that – Dallas believes it, the Rams believe it, the Jaguars believe it – so I’m not saying I’m picking them to be number one offense. But they absolutely think they can be.

The schedule point is a good one. Caleb’s improvement in year two under Ben Johnson – year three in the league – this is the leap year. He got better every month last season as he learned the system. I can’t even imagine how big of a leap he could take from year two to year three.

You’re not going to hear me come on here and say I think the Bears are an eight-win team. No shot.