The Chicago Bears are one win away from being the NFC's number 2 seed and having home-field advantage through the Divisional round.
Being in such a spot, it wouldn't be a surprise if the Bears, in Ben Johnson's first year, were a top Super Bowl contender. However, that isn't the case by one metric.
As highlighted in a piece from Aaron Schatz on ESPN, the FPI (Football Power Index) gives the Bears worse odds to win the Super Bowl than a team they've recently beaten, and another that's yet to clinch a playoff spot.
Bears given worse odds to win Super Bowl than Packers, Ravens
In the piece from Schatz, there is a discussion of each playoff team's biggest concern. While the Bears' concern, a struggling secondary against slot receivers, is an issue, one of the more noteworthy parts of this article is the Bears' chance to win the Super Bowl.
Schatz delves into each team's weakness, starting with the Seattle Seahawks, since they have the greatest "FPI chance to win Super Bowl" of any team at 13.4%.
FPI is a "measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team's performance going forward for the rest of the season," per ESPN's explanation.
The Bears' FPI chance to win the Super Bowl is at 3.4%, which is worse than the Ravens at 4.3%, the Packers at 6.2%, the Houston Texans at 5.8%, the Jacksonville Jaguars at 5.3%, and the Los Angeles Chargers at 4.7%.
Chicago's odds to win the Super Bowl by this metric are better than only the Pittsburgh Steelers (1.2%), the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0.6%), and the Carolina Panthers (0.5%).
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Despite Chicago potentially holding the NFC's number 2 seed, their odds to win the Super Bowl are worse than the NFC's 7th seed, and a team in the Ravens, which hasn't even clinched a playoff spot yet.
The Bears recently beat the Packers and have looked very strong lately, and yet don't have great odds to win the Super Bowl. Baltimore could get eliminated from the playoffs before they even begin, and they still have better Super Bowl odds than the Bears.
This is an odd prediction from ESPN's FPI model, to say the least. Their current FPI is just 0.6, which is less than the Cincinnati Bengals' at 1.8. The Bengals have been eliminated from playoff contention for weeks now.
The Bears will get a chance to prove this model wrong in round one of the playoffs, as they're going to face a team with better Super Bowl odds than they have, despite being the much higher seed.
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