Colston Loveland did not exactly see Chicago coming.
The Bears’ 2025 draft pick said recently on an episode of “Bussin with the Boys” podcast that he was surprised Chicago took him, and he also said he believed the Chargers would have grabbed him 22nd overall if the Bears had passed. Loveland, who played at Michigan for Jim Harbaugh, ended up in Chicago anyway - and now he’s settled in enough to look back on the move with some perspective.
That surprise matters because Loveland arrived as the splash pick of the 2025 draft for the Bears, even though he was not expected to be the first tight end off the board. The selection still went through, and Loveland came to play in Chicago.
What followed in 2025 was the kind of early chemistry teams hope to stumble into and almost never do. Caleb Williams and Loveland spent just one season together, but by the end of the year their connection had become impossible to ignore. Loveland moved from unexpected first-round pick to the Bears’ top receiver in a single season, and he did it after a slow start.
That kind of growth is why the conversation around this pairing has already started to stretch beyond one season. The NFL has seen what a dominant quarterback-tight end partnership can look like.
Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski changed the way the league thought about the position, with everyone knowing where the ball was going and still being unable to stop it. Then came Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, the most effective QB/TE duo in the game right now, a combination defenses still can’t quite solve.
Williams and Loveland are nowhere near that level yet, and nobody should pretend otherwise. They’ve only just begun their partnership, and any real comparison has to wait until there are rings to point to. But the first year gave Chicago something real to build on.
After one season, Bears fans have every reason to believe they’re watching something special take shape.
In Other News...
Ben Johnson's Bears Could Be On Verge Of A Franchise First
There is a real path for the Bears to do something they have never done before on offense, with Luther Burden III, Rome Odunze and Colston Loveland all positioned to chase 1,000 receiving yards in the same season. Chicago has flirted with high-end passing production before, but three receivers reaching that benchmark would be a franchise first and a sign that Ben Johnsons system is starting to take hold in a big way.
Rome Odunze has already given a glimpse of what the ceiling can look like, finding the end zone five times in the first four games of the 2025 season and stacking early momentum with a strong start. Caleb Williams should also be more comfortable after a full season in Johnsons offense, and that growing rhythm with the passing game is a big reason the Bears can even entertain this kind of breakout. The question now is whether the rest of the target tree can keep pace. [Read more 🡒]
Ben Johnson Keeping Jim Dray Already Looks Like A Bears Win
Keeping Jim Dray on the staff after the coaching change already looks like one of the quieter smart moves in Chicago. The Bears have a tight end room that matters to what Ben Johnson wants to build, and Dray has a track record that makes the decision easier to understand. He helped shape Cole Kmet into a reliable piece and then guided Colston Loveland through a season in which the rookie quickly became a central part of the passing game.
There is also a longer-term layer to it, because the Bears are not just trying to get production out of the top of the depth chart. Dray is now working with rookie Sam Roush as the organization looks for a future backup option, which gives his job a developmental edge beyond the obvious names. If Chicago is going to keep getting value out of the position, the next step may be less about who catches the passes and more about how much Dray can keep squeezing out of the room. [Read more 🡒]
Bears Are Getting Super Bowl Buzz But One Doubt Wont Go Away
The buzz around the Bears is getting louder, and it is not hard to see why. Sports Illustrateds Conor Orr put Chicago among 14 NFL teams with a realistic shot at the Super Bowl, pointing to Ben Johnson as one of the leagues elite play-callers and crediting the kind of offensive structure that can raise a teams ceiling fast. Add in Caleb Williams and a supporting cast that should give the offense plenty of punch, and the optimism around Halas Hall has a real football case behind it.
Still, the conversation around this team keeps circling back to the same question: can the rest of the roster keep pace with the hype? Chicagos knack for surviving tight games last season, including a string of fourth-quarter comebacks, suggests the Bears know how to hang around when things get messy. But if the offense is ready to take off, the bigger test may be whether the defense can hold up well enough for those gains to matter in January. [Read more 🡒]