New York Jets vs Chicago Bears, Week 4 2026

Jets vs Bears is the team that threw for fewer yards than anyone in football against the team that just traded away its leading receiver. Both spent the offseason arguing the fix was already close to hand.

Kickoff is 1:00 PM ET on Sunday, October 4, noon in Chicago, on CBS. From the opening snap this page runs itself: live score, real time score, game leaders, box scores, play-by-play with the game flow chart and team statistics, every panel updating without anyone hitting refresh.

Jets vs Bears also closes out a three week homestand at Soldier Field, the calmest stretch Chicago will get all season.

Jets vs Bears Start Time, TV Channel and Live Stream

Date	Sunday, October 4, 2026
Kickoff	1:00 PM ET / 12:00 PM CT / 11:00 AM MT / 10:00 AM PT
TV	CBS
Venue	Soldier Field, Chicago
Capacity	About 61,500, the smallest in the NFL
Home team	Chicago Bears

CBS carries Jets vs Bears in the early Sunday window, a regional assignment, so the market map decides and Sunday Ticket handles anyone outside it. New York runs an hour ahead of Chicago, which makes this a noon local kickoff and no real adjustment for the visitors.

The Worst Passing Offense in the League Went Shopping

New York finished last season with the fewest passing yards in the NFL. The single longest throw of the year went 52 yards, from Tyrod Taylor to Adonai Mitchell, which tells you most of what the tape looked like.

So the Jets changed the quarterback and the play caller in the same offseason. Geno Smith takes the snaps, Frank Reich runs the offense, and Aaron Glenn is in his second year as head coach saying the target is explosive plays without giving up on the intermediate game. Glenn's argument for Smith is about belief as much as arm: Garrett Wilson, Adonai Mitchell, Omar Cooper Jr. and Isaiah Williams all think the ball is coming, because Smith spreads it around.

Jets vs Bears is week four of testing that against somebody else's defense.

Chicago Replaced DJ Moore From Within

The Bears traded DJ Moore to Buffalo, which removed the leading receiver from an offense that had just won the division. Chicago did not go out and buy a replacement, because it thought it already had two.

Rome Odunze and Luther Burden III finished third and fourth on the team in receiving last season, behind Moore and tight end Colston Loveland, and camp has been the pair of them absorbing the targets that used to go elsewhere. Caleb Williams is in his second season with Ben Johnson, and Cole Kmet has described the continuity as something he has not had in most of his time in Chicago.

Williams also brought the Bears back to win seven games they trailed inside the final two minutes last year, which reads either as nerve or as a warning. Jets vs Bears may settle which.

Jets vs Bears: Two Second Seasons

Both head coaches are a year in, and both inherited the same problem from opposite ends. Aaron Glenn had a defense and needed an offense, so he bought one. Ben Johnson had an offense and a defense that spent last season installing a scheme at the cost of its fundamentals, by Dennis Allen's own admission.

That makes Jets vs Bears a reasonable measure of which second year is further along, and an early read on whether New York's new voices work as well on the road as they did in August.

Rosters are set. The cut to 53 passed on August 30. Follow the Jets and Bears pages, and check the NFL standings a month into the season. The rest of the slate sits on the 2026 NFL schedule.

Soldier Field Is a War Memorial First

The part visitors miss is what the building was built to be. Soldier Field opened in 1924 and was named the following year for the American soldiers who died in war. The Doric colonnades along the east and west sides are the original structure, and they are why the place looks like nothing else in the league.

The 2003 renovation lowered a modern seating bowl inside those colonnades, which cost the stadium its National Historic Landmark designation three years later and left it with the smallest capacity in the NFL at roughly 61,500. That scarcity is worth knowing before you shop for seats: Jets vs Bears is a harder ticket than a Week 4 game against a non-division opponent usually is.

The stadium sits on the lakefront in the Museum Campus and belongs to the Chicago Park District rather than the Bears, which is why it doubles as public parkland the rest of the week. The Park District's Soldier Field page covers the grounds and the wider campus.

Jets vs Bears FAQ

Jets vs Bears puts two second year projects in front of each other in a memorial stadium that holds fewer people than anywhere else in the league. Come back on game day for inactives and the live score.

Last updated: August 27, 2026