Tyson Bagent looks like he’s nearing a return just in time for Monday Night Football. However, Jay Glazer of FOX Sports indicated that the Chicago Bears‘ plan is still to start Case Keenum. The primary reasoning is simple. They feel Bagent didn’t get enough work learning the game plan this week. Add his concussion issues on top of that, and it just feels more sensible to go with Keenum. His experience should be a considerable benefit in keeping the offense from getting too far out of sync.

There could be another factor. Keenum has had decent success going against Vic Fangio. The Philadelphia Eagles’ defensive coordinator has been among the NFL’s best for a long time. His unit was the primary reason that the team won a Super Bowl two years ago. It’s still as dangerous as ever. Keenum would know. He has gone against it a few times in his career. As a starter, he has faced Fangio three times. Keenum is 3-0 in those contests, completing over 71% of his passes with 3 touchdowns and no interceptions.

Case Keenum understands his job going against Fangio.

Efficiency is the name of the game. It is highly unlikely that he will be able to put up significant numbers. Few can. The goal must be to stay ahead of the sticks, distribute the ball, and avoid turnovers. He accomplished that objective in each of those three games. The game plan was the same every time. Manage the game, run the ball, and hope the defense gives you some support. Fortunately, Keenum got it in all three. His offenses averaged 162 yards on the ground across all three contests.

You can bet the Bears hope to duplicate this strategy on Monday night. They’re equipped to do so. Johnson’s system is geared toward running the ball, and they have the pieces in place. Philadelphia is only 23rd in the league against the run. Case Keenum understands how to adhere to a run-first game plan. He does it quite well. Victory is not guaranteed for the Bears. Still, they’re at least fielding a quarterback who understands the challenge ahead of him and has experience dealing with it.

Will it be enough?

That depends entirely on which Bears team shows up. If they arrive with urgency, this is a game they can still win. They’re at home. They are equipped to attack the Eagles’ biggest weaknesses. If they can just avoid the costly mistakes they made last week, this should be a game they can steal. On the other hand, if they let the Eagles set the tone early, it can just as easily get away from them. This is one of those games where we’ll see just how good a coach Johnson is.

Keenum has been here before. He’s been thrust into a situation where he had to replace a former #1 overall pick and try to keep the train on the tracks. It worked out then. Maybe it can again. The Bears have the utmost confidence in him. Maybe there’s some magic left in that old body for one more upset. Doing it against Fangio would be rather fitting.

The Chicago Bears won’t have Caleb Williams’ magic for up to a month after the news that he’d suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain. That means their season’s fate is in the hands of backups Case Keenum and Tyson Bagent. It is not a great situation to be in. To somehow stay alive moving forward, they will need a mixture of great execution from the rest of the roster and a stroke (or two) of good fortune in the coming weeks. It’s possible the Bears may have gotten one of the latter already via some alarming Breece Hall news.

Chicago plays the New York Jets next week. Hall has been their best offensive player for quite some time. He was off to a good start again in 2026, amassing 210 total yards and a touchdown in his first two games. Then things went sideways in week 3 against the Detroit Lions. As the Jets were driving deep into Detroit territory, Hall was tackled along the sideline. He seemed to go down awkwardly and failed to get up. He was quickly taken to the locker room and declared out for the rest of the game with a thigh injury.

Losing Breece Hall is a gut punch for New York.

Their running game was already suspect this season even with him. Hall averaged 3.4 yards going into that Lions game. His backfield teammate was even worse. Braelon Allen managed just 3.1 yards. This doesn’t even account for Hall’s impact in the passing game. He was 3rd on the team in receptions with 7. There is a reason the Jets worked hard to extend his contract. Given how it looked when he went down and how fast he was declared out? This feels like it was a quad injury.

A pretty serious one, too.

He is all but certain to miss next week when New York visits Chicago. Probably more with how rough it looked. This presents a premium opportunity for the Bears. If they can somehow upset the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night to reach 2-1, their odds of beating the Jets are considerably better. Remember, their run defense has been a big problem to start the year. With Breece Hall out of the picture, that becomes less of a concern. Chicago could take advantage to reach 3-1 with two wins coming without Williams in the lineup.

At the very least, this improves the chances of avoiding 1-3.

Presuming the popular prediction holds true, and the Eagles prevail, the Bears would go into a must-win situation next Sunday at 1-2. While the Jets don’t seem nearly as bad as they were last year, they still aren’t a good football team. They are beatable. Head coach Ben Johnson knows Aaron Glenn’s defense well. He should be able to manufacture some points in that game. Responding becomes much tougher for the Jets without Hall. The NFL is all about seizing advantages when they present themselves.

Everything starts with Monday night. The Bears know people are doubting them. Par for the course when starting a third-string quarterback. If they want to show everybody that they’re not a one-person team, this is the time to do it. Philadelphia is good, but they’re not infallible. With the right game plans, they’ve proven to be vulnerable this season. If Chicago can pull it off, so many things open up for them.

The Chicago Bears are now likely not to have Caleb Williams for the next three weeks as he deals with a grade 2 hamstring strain. That means Tyson Bagent and Case Keenum will have to carry the load moving forward. It remains uncertain which of them will start. For most of the week, it looked like Keenum was the guy. However, Bagent practiced in full on Saturday. That gives him a reasonable chance to get his first start since 2023. There isn’t a consensus on who it should be. However, if Kalif Raymond had his say, he would push for Keenum.

Lucky for him, it’s looking that way.

It’s easy to forget that Chicago’s third-string backup actually started 38 games between 2017 and 2019. He went 18-20. Though his stats weren’t anything special, he did enough to keep his teams afloat. One way this was accomplished was by doing the smart thing. Get the ball to your best players. Seven years ago, that was Terry McLaurin. In Denver the year prior, it was Emmanuel Sanders. During his magical run in Minnesota in 2017? It was Adam Thielein. What do all of those names have in common? They were their respective team’s primary slot receiver.

Kalif Raymond is filling that role now in Chicago.

It was a big reason why head coach Ben Johnson pushed to sign him. The Bears didn’t have a definitive presence in the slot last year. Instead, they used more of a committee approach with D.J. Moore, Olamide Zaccheaus, and Luther Burden. It didn’t always work well. To make this offense go, you need a dependable presence on the inside. It is why he leads the team in targets. That is likely to hit overdrive with Keenum. He is much more of a system guy, meaning he will run the plays as designed more often than not.

Coach Johnson has repeatedly said this offense tends to find the slot receiver a lot. There is no reason to believe that will change. Keenum will act as an extension of his will. While the quarterback will try to distribute the ball to multiple targets going forward, he has a practical mindset. Get the ball to the playmakers and let them do their thing. It worked pretty well at previous stops when he had actual help. There is no reason it shouldn’t this time around. Kalif Raymond is plenty capable of handling the workload.

The bigger question is whether this is the right decision.

While Raymond is a solid player, he is not the best weapon on this offense. That title belongs to Colston Loveland, with Luther Burden probably next on the list. Yet the Bears haven’t really done a great job getting either of them the football. One would think they hope to rectify that against the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night. Unfortunately, the opportunities aren’t likely to be plentiful. This defense is one of the best in the league against the pass. One has to figure the Bears will focus on running the ball.

That is also why Raymond is the name to watch. He was the primary target against Carolina when Chicago ran the ball really well in week 1. His ability to move the chains and keep the offense ahead of the sticks is key to making such a game plan work. We already know Keenum won’t have any qualms looking that way. If you have him in your fantasy leagues, you’d best start him Monday night.

The Chicago Bears initially feared they may have lost Caleb Williams for the season after watching him go down against the Minnesota Vikings. Thankfully, the young quarterback avoided a disastrous injury, such as an Achilles or ACL tear. Tests eventually revealed that Williams had suffered a hamstring injury. That was not season-ending by any stretch. The only uncertainty was how severe it was. After some time, information came out that it was likely a Grade 1 strain. This meant that Williams could be back as early as next week against the New York Jets.

It now appears that wasn’t the case. ESPN reported on Sunday that Williams had, in fact, suffered a Grade 2 strain. While not devastating, it does mean the quarterback is likely out longer than originally hoped. Such an injury usually causes players to miss 3 or 4 weeks of action. This means the Bears could be looking at up to a month of Tyson Bagent or Case Keenum. As much confidence as the team may have in those two, it is far from ideal for a team that has Super Bowl aspirations.

“Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams has a Grade 2 hamstring injury that doctors consider a three-to-four-week injury, league sources told ESPN and NFL Network.

This doesn’t mean that Williams, who the Bears have touted as a quick healer, couldn’t return sooner than that timeline. It just means that doctors believe this normally is a three-to-four-week injury in most players, and that is the doctors’ best estimation of how long it could take Williams to recover.

The Bears officially ruled Williams out for their Week 3 game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night, and have tried to keep the extent of his injury under wraps for competitive-purpose advantages.”

This Caleb Williams update brings everything into focus.

The Bears are now all but certain to play at least two games without Williams. Probably three. They faced the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night. Then the New York Jets will come to town. By far the biggest one to watch will be the trip up to Green Bay for a grudge match with the Packers. If he misses that, then the extent of the injury will be pretty obvious. This is supposed to be one of the easier stretches of the schedule. Losing Williams at this time really hurt. Remember, they have both New England, Seattle, and Tampa Bay waiting for them before the bye week.

So what happens if Caleb Williams misses the full month? Looking at how daunting their second-half schedule is, they must find a way to at least stay at .500 during his absence. That means winning two of the next four games. Can it be done? Yes. While Bagent and Keenum are not Williams in terms of talent, this offense wasn’t designed to be quarterback-first. The Bears are a running team under head coach Ben Johnson. If they can pound the ball on the ground and get some solid performances from the defense, they can steal two games.

The vital key is that the Bears don’t beat themselves.

A huge reason they lost to Minnesota last week was a brutal series of self-inflicted wounds. They committed 8 penalties and 2 turnovers, giving the Vikings all the extra help they needed to pull off the win. Williams was good enough to overcome such setbacks. With him gone, it is more imperative than ever that the team play as efficiently as possible. Limit the penalties and don’t turn it over. A run-first approach should help with that. Johnson is unlikely to insist on Bagent avoiding aggressive throws. That isn’t how he’s wired. Still, it will be conveyed that he should not be reckless.

The game against Philadelphia will say a lot about this team. If they come out flat against the Eagles, it will not bode well for their chances to stay afloat long enough for Williams to return. They pride themselves on their mental toughness. Well, this is the biggest test they’ve faced in a long time. Johnson seems confident they can handle the challenge. The next four weeks will say a lot about his coaching ability.

Most of the moves the Chicago Bears made this offseason at least made logical sense. They traded D.J. Moore because they couldn’t afford his contract and had young receivers ready for more targets. Tremaine Edmunds was released for largely the same reason. Kevin Byard, Jaquan Brisker, and C.J. Gardner-Johnson were allowed to hit free agency because they lacked the speed Dennis Allen wanted in his secondary. However, one move received widespread surprise and confusion. That was the Bears trading Gervon Dexter to the Atlanta Falcons.

Now it’s true that the team was unlikely to sign the defensive tackle to a contract extension. It would likely be over their budget, and he wasn’t a natural fit for Dennis Allen’s scheme anyway. Still, he was second on their team last season with 6 sacks and 43 pressures. Wouldn’t you want to keep that around another year, even if you know he’s leaving in free agency? The Bears didn’t like that idea. So they flipped him to Atlanta for cornerback Clark Phillips and a 5th round pick.

Three games into the season, and it looks like that was a regrettable decision.

Gervon Dexter is on pace for his best season.

Not only does he have 1 sack and 14 pressures in three games with the Falcons, but his 23.3 pass rush win percentage is the 4th-highest among all defensive linemen in the NFL. That is ahead of Maxx Crosby and even Dallas Turner. By contrast, the Bears’ defensive tackle unit has 7 pressures and 1 sack total in two games. That isn’t a great look, especially after Allen championed the team’s newfound depth at the position. Maybe part of the problem is giving Jordan Van Den Berg, your explosive new rookie, only 14 snaps. Or maybe it’s focusing too much on scheme fit and not enough on proven production.

Either way, Gervon Dexter is surging toward a significant payday next spring. Atlanta is projected to have more than $114 million in cap space. They are well-prepared to pay it. Based on what we’ve seen so far, Dexter is a key component to that Falcons defensive front—an ingredient they were missing. While the Bears do rank 5th overall in total pressures, they’ve mostly done so via the blitz. It is worth wondering how much better it might have been had they hung onto Dexter.

There is no time left for regrets.

The team clearly felt it had valid reasons for the change. Allen must’ve felt that he needed a specific type of defensive tackle to run his system properly. Still, it is hard to understand unloading good players when they helped you win the year before. Dexter did more than enough in 2025 to justify another season. Alas, the business of the NFL always gets in the way eventually. The Bears felt they had one of two avenues. Let Dexter play out his contract, or move him immediately for the best possible return.

They chose the latter.

It isn’t the first time a team has done this. It won’t be the last. The unfortunate truth is that the move doesn’t always yield positive results. Several teams likely wish they had just kept the player instead. Whether the Bears get a favorable return from this trade depends on whether the front office can get something from the 5th-round pick they received. That might be asking too much, considering Dexter was a 2nd round pick himself.