Ranking each Chicago sports franchise’s best team of the past decade

This last decade has been very kind to the Chicago Blackhawks and Chicago Cubs. Besides that, it’s been a frustrating decade. Here are the best seasons for each team (Chicago Bears, Blackhawks, Chicago Bulls, Cubs, and Chicago White Sox).

Throughout the last ten years, Chicago sports haven’t had much to cheer outside of hockey and three years of Chicago Cubs‘ baseball. It’s been a lot of playoffs disappointment, choking away playoff spots, and missing the playoffs entirely.

This list isn’t going in order by the best teams, it’s going by alphabetical order.

1. 2010 Chicago Bears (11-5)

The 2010 Chicago Bears won the NFC North and got a first-round bye. That was the first time the Bears did either one of those things since 2006. A year after trading for quarterback Jay Cutler, the team started to get things going. Lovie Smith build up an elite defense, Mike Martz helped the offense fire on all cylinders and the team had a chance to do great things.

The Bears started off the season 3-0, beating the Green Bay Packers in primetime, Week 3. That was the game that made us say, this team has a chance. As a Bears’ fan, if the Bears don’t beat the Packers that year, you can kiss the season goodbye.

It came down to Week 17 where the Packers were in a “win or go home” scenario against the Bears. The Packers would win the game 10-3 and became the sixth-seed in the playoffs. The Bears ran through Seattle in Jay Cutler’s first playoff win. The defense was playing generational and was ready for the NFC Championship.

The NFC Championship was a third matchup with the Packers. If the Bears would have won this game, Aaron Rodgers would be Super Bowl-less. Anyways, Jay Cutler would get hurt in the second half, which gave Todd Collins the starting role. The veteran quarterback stunk so bad, Lovie Smith sent unknown Caleb Hanie out there to play.

Hanie brought the team back within one score late in the game. They had the ball late down 21-14. The season ended on a Hanie interception.

Since then, the Chicago Bears have been quite the disappointment. There was a chance they had something special but it turned into being a fluke. Even though they had a second playoff season last year with Matt Nagy, winning a playoff game gave them the nod.

I personally do think the 2018 Chicago Bears had a better chance of winning the Super Bowl. If Cody Parkey didn’t miss that kick, Mitchell Trubisky could have been raising the Lombardi Trophy. Either way, both seasons were excited.