New York Jets vs Chicago Bears — Win Probability

Chicago's Defense Delivers: Model Underestimated Bears in Win vs. Jets

The Chicago Bears defeated the New York Jets 23-12 on Sunday, a decisive 11-point victory that exceeded the model's pregame projection by more than three full scores.

Before kickoff, the model projected Chicago to win 23.5-20, giving the Bears a 61% win probability. That 3.5-point expected margin aligned perfectly with the market's published spread, suggesting Chicago and the betting line were in agreement on the matchup's most likely outcome. The model did identify Chicago as the more probable winner, but it significantly underestimated by how much.

The actual result—an 11-point margin—represented a 7.5-point swing from what was projected. Chicago matched the model's offensive expectation almost exactly at 23 points, but New York fell substantially short of its own 20-point projection, scoring just 12. The Jets' defense was worse than anticipated, or the Bears' defense was better, or both; the gap was too large to attribute to normal variance.

This was not an upset. The model correctly identified Chicago as favored, and the Bears won as expected. But the margin of victory was far larger than projected. The model saw a close game with Chicago pulling away; reality delivered a blowout by Week 4 standards.

What this says: The model captured the winner correctly but misjudged either Chicago's defensive strength or New York's offensive capability—or both. A 7.5-point miss on the margin is the kind of gap that doesn't happen from rounding; it points to a meaningful underestimation of the quality differential between these two teams on Sunday. Chicago improved to 3-1 while New York fell to 1-3.