NEWSLETTER
The Artificial Intelligence revolution is unavoidable.
But using it to cook up projections for the upcoming Chicago Bears season isn’t something I had on my 2024 BINGO card. And yet, here we are with The 33rd Team consulting A.I. to share a prediction on the Bears’ leading receivers for the upcoming season. Frankly, I’m surprised that this is what got spit out:
Bears fans have spent most of their lives hoping for a 1,000-yard receiver. That A.I. predicts the team will have *THREE* of them in 2024 is one of the most mind-blowing things I’ve seen. And if D.J. Moore, Keenan Allen, and Rome Odunze can make it happen, I’d dance the happiest dance.
A.I. projections forecasting the Bears to have three 1,000-yard receivers is mind-blowing
Let’s give this some perspective. Chicago’s football team has had just four 1,000-yard receiving seasons since 2013. So for A.I. to project three 1,000-yard wide receivers in 2024 is something that stopped me in my tracks.
This is the Bears we’re talking about, folks. A franchise that has had just two years in which it had a wide receiver tandem putting up 1,000-yard receiving seasons:
Given that history, how can you expect me to believe that this team is going to have three 1,000-yard receivers in the same year? C’mon man. That is such a mind-bending thing to think about the Bears doing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m here for it. But the Bears have broken my brain to the point to where I have to see it in order to believe it. I want to see it. And I think it is plausible.
For what it’s worth, D.J. Moore told Kay Adams that he believes it will be a race to the 1,000-yard marker between himself, Keenan Allen, and Rome Odunze. So, at a minimum, Moore seems to think that all three receivers have the potential to have a 1,000-yard receiving season in 2024. All three surpassed 1,000 receiving yards in 2023, but with different teams (duh). Moore did it with the Bears, Allen with the Los Angeles Chargers, and Odunze in his final season at the University of Washington.
Could they do it again? I certainly do not want to go on record betting against those guys. That is an easy way to end up as part of a wide receiver’s bulletin board material. But maybe I should take one for the team. Games of consequence don’t begin until September, so I’ve got some time to hash this out.
The thing I can’t shake when thinking about the possibility of three 1,000-yard wide receivers on the Bears is what it would mean about the quarterbacking of Caleb Williams. Stop and think about it for a moment. If the Bears field a trio of wideouts who put up 1,000+ receiving yards, that would mean that the rookie quarterback is putting up bonkers passing numbers. Right? Maybe it is an oversimplification to say that A.I.’s projection for Chicago’s receiver threesome is an endorsement of the team’s rookie signal caller. But how else am I supposed to read that? After all, you don’t rack up 3,000 yards worth of pass-catching without some level of competency from the quarterback.
Now I’m wondering if Caleb can string together enough quality games in Year 1 to get to 4,000 passing yards. Because if A.I. is projecting Odunze, Moore, and Allen to go combine for 3,000+ yards, then perhaps a 4,000-yard passing season from a quarterback isn’t all that far-fetched. But I should probably pump the brakes on that because it has been a while since a Bears QB has thrown for 3,000 yards. The last one to do it was Mitchell Trubisky in 2019. Andy Dalton didn’t do it. Neither did Justin Fields. Thinking about this makes me sad.
Hopefully, Caleb Williams changes the narrative. And if the Bears end up with three 1,000-yard receivers in 2024, I think he’ll have done just that (and possibly more).
