Bears vs. Vikings Week 1: Who comes out on top in our score prediction?

Here's who will win the Chicago Bears vs. Minnesota Vikings Week 1 Monday night game

Brad Rempel-Imagn Images

The Chicago Bears welcome the Minnesota Vikings to Soldier Field for Week 1's Monday night football matchup in a game that will go a long way in determining the short-term outlook for Caleb Williams and Ben Johnson.

Beginning the season 0-1 is far from fatal, but it could send the anti-Caleb Williams hot takes into a new stratosphere. If Williams plays poorly or looks overmatched by Brian Flores and the Vikings' aggressive defense, the chatter about the former first overall pick being a bust will only get louder.

The good news for the Bears and Williams is that he already has experience against this Vikings defense, as does Johnson, who's successfully called plays against Flores during his tenure as the Detroit Lions' offensive coordinator.

While the Bears' offense is a far cry from what we've seen from the Lions recently, the fact that Ben Johnson knows how and where to attack Flores' group is an obvious advantage.

Brad Rempel-Imagn Images

So too is the Bears' revamped offensive line. Gone is the group that surrendered 68 sacks in 2024, and it could result in a shock to a Vikings' front seven that became accustomed to the ease with which they harassed Williams. That shouldn't be the case in 2025.

This game will ultimately come down to how Williams performs. Obvious, right? The Bears' rushing attack should be fine, but hardly game-changing in Week 1. The Vikings' defense was the second-best against the run in 2024, and while that revamped Bears offensive line will help D'Andre Swift's cause, I doubt Swift will be super effective.

If there is a weakness in the Vikings' defense that the Bears can expose, it's the secondary, which ranked 28th in 2024. Chicago will challenge Minnesota on all three levels of the passing game with a scary good bunch of skill players in DJ Moore, Rome Odunze, Olamide Zaccheaus, Luther Burden III, Colston Loveland, and Cole Kmet. It's as deep a skill group as there is in the NFL; they'll give the Vikings all they can handle.

On the flipside, the Chicago Bears' defense, while far from elite, will benefit from facing JJ McCarthy in his first-ever NFL start. The Vikings' run game will be tough to stop; Aaron Jones has always given the Bears fits. But he alone won't be enough to win the game for Minnesota.

Of course, there's that Justin Jefferson guy, but if the Bears can throw McCarthy's football brain into a blender, Jefferson, by default, will be taken out of the game.

Week 1 predictions are always tough to make. We won't know the personality of either of these teams until we're a few weeks into the 2025 regular season. But with so much juice injected into this Bears team with the arrival of Ben Johnson, and the expected improvement of Caleb Williams in Year 2, I find it hard to believe the Vikings and JJ McCarthy can come into Soldier Field, on Monday night, in his first start, and find a way to win.

With that in mind, and even though 61% of the experts have the Vikings securing the win, I have the Chicago Bears defeating the Minnesota Vikings, 24-20.

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