The Bears went into Sunday with their quarterback situation under a microscope. They came out with a 23-12 win, a 3-1 record, and a much different conversation.
Caleb Williams was ruled out for the second straight game because of the hamstring injury he sustained in Week 2, leaving Tyson Bagent to make his first start of the season. By the end of the afternoon at Soldier Field, the question was no longer whether Chicago could survive the absence of its starter. It was how thoroughly New York’s offense had stalled against a Bears team that leaned on the run and controlled the game from start to finish.
Chicago ran 89 plays to the Jets’ 32.
That gap told the story as much as the final score. The Bears piled up 492 total yards and ran the ball 54 times for 232 yards, continuing to build around the league’s most productive rushing attack. Entering the game, Chicago led the NFL in rushing at 184.3 yards per game and 5.27 rushing yards per play, and that identity showed up immediately against New York.
Kyle Monangai was the centerpiece. He carried 30 times for a career-high 146 yards and two touchdowns, including a 5-yard score with 2:26 left in the third quarter. D’Andre Swift also remained part of the picture, and the Bears’ ground game kept the Jets from ever settling into the kind of rhythm that would have forced Chicago to lean on Bagent more heavily than it wanted to.
Bagent did his part, too.
He completed 25 of 34 passes for 268 yards, giving the Bears enough through the air to complement the run game without asking him to carry the offense. It was the kind of performance that fit the moment: efficient, steady, and enough to keep Chicago in control while the rushing attack did the heavy lifting. It also made Bagent the third quarterback to lead the Bears to a win in the first four weeks of the season.
That was the pregame intrigue, and it mattered. Williams had not practiced during the week and was ruled out Friday, so Chicago entered the game with uncertainty at the most important position on the field. The Bears still have not announced whether Bagent or Case Keenum will start in place of Williams next week, but Sunday offered a clear answer to the immediate question: the offense can function without its starter when the run game is this effective.
The Jets had a much harder time finding any answer at all.
Geno Smith finished 8 of 15 for 119 yards and a touchdown, and New York managed only 157 total yards. The Jets scored just 12 points, with Jason Sanders providing a 36-yard field goal after a turnover. They also committed 12 penalties, including three calls that wiped out three interceptions, a sequence that only deepened the sense that the game kept slipping away from them in pieces.
New York was already short-handed, missing four key starters, including Breece Hall and Adonai Mitchell. But the bigger issue was how little the offense did with the chances it had. The Jets had just 32 plays, never came close to matching Chicago’s tempo, and spent most of the afternoon reacting rather than dictating anything.
That is what shifted the postgame focus.
The Bears’ quarterback situation had been the headline going in. By the end, the more urgent question was why the Jets could not make that situation matter. Chicago did not need a perfect passing day from Bagent, and it did not need to abandon the ground game to protect him. It simply kept running, kept the ball, and kept New York from turning the absence of Williams into a real opening.
The result was a game that said as much about the Jets as it did about the Bears. Chicago’s depth showed up in the form of Bagent, Monangai, and a run game that dictated the terms. New York’s offense, meanwhile, never found a way to make the quarterback change feel like a vulnerability.