The Chicago Bears' 2026 schedule says they have nine home games, but we can tack on another after the Week 6 contest against the Atlanta Falcons.
That's because Bears fans showed up in force for the game at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday, when Chicago topped the Falcons, 31-23.
It was very clear from the jump that there was a huge percentage of Bears fans in the stands because it sounded like a home game for Chicago, as some reporters noted.
"Pretty loud contingent of Bears fans made it to Atlanta and are making this presence known as the team runs onto the field," ESPN's Courtney Cronin wrote.
"I’ve never seen more opposing fans in Mercedes-Benz Stadium than I’m seeing (and hearing) today," said Joe Patrick of 92.9 The Game.
Bears fans forced Falcons to use silent count
After the game, Falcons head coach Kevin Stefanski admitted that the team actually practiced with a silent count in anticipation of this very thing and had to utilize it because Bears fans were so loud.
"We were," Stefanski admitted when asked if the Falcons had to utilize a silent count.
"We love our fans. Our fans are so supportive, but we just felt like we knew that we'd likely need to be on a silent count," Stefanski added after being asked if that frustrated him.
Stefanski can say what he wants about not being frustrated, and quite frankly he should to save face with fans, even though they deserve some tough love after what transpired on Sunday.
But the reality is he can't be happy about having his own stadium being invaded by opposing fans to make a home game feel like a road one. That isn't easy for any quarterback to overcome, let alone a fairly inexperienced one like Michael Penix Jr.
Penix was understandably frustrated with the fact the team had to go to the silent count in order to combat crowd noise of opposing fans at the Falcons' own stadium.
"We did silent count all week so we were good with silent count stuff," Penix said. "The crowd noise thing, you know, it's always tough whenever you're playing at home and you hear early in the week that we might have to work silent cadence - because you always expect our fans to overrule the opponent's fans, but we were ready for it and I think we executed the silent cadence well."
Bears fans are built different
Talk about a glaring contrast between fan bases.
This would never happen in Chicago, where Bears fans always show up to support their team and never let an opposing fan base take over Soldier Field.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Falcons fans clearly don't care enough to make sure they avoid that happening in Atlanta.
There aren't many fan bases in the NFL that are capable of doing what the Bears' fans did on Sunday. They're simply built different and the franchise should (and does) appreciate that.
Add us as a preferred source on Google