One criticism of the 2025 Chicago Bears has been that they haven't beaten any teams with a winning record. 

The Bears' seven wins are against the Dallas Cowboys (4-5), Las Vegas Raiders (2-8), Washington Commanders (3-8), New Orleans Saints (2-8), Cincinnati Bengals (3-7), New York Giants (2-9) and Minnesota Vikings (4-6). 

While that may be true, another team did something similar last season and still made a historic playoff run. What was that team, you might ask? It was none other than the Commanders.

The only teams that Washington beat in 2024 with a winning record were the Philadelphia Eagles and Bengals. 

The Commanders clinched a playoff berth and made it all the way to the NFC Championship Game before losing to the Eagles 55-23. 

Yahoo Sports' Jori Epstein believed that it didn't matter that the Bears were in a similar situation and that Chicago wasn't a fraud for doing so. 

"Were the 2024 Commanders, with everything you know about their season, frauds?" Epstein said. "So, when we look at it, we can say that the Chicago Bears continue to beat teams that don't have a winning record, but when the Commanders went 12-5 last year, 10 of their 12 wins were against teams that finished the season with a losing record. The Commanders did not beat good teams to get to the playoffs, they just happened to win enough games to get there, and then they rode that momentum in the playoffs. But when I think about the momentum of what they've done in the first year and I think about the turnover margin, I don't think this is quite as fraudulent as it seems." 

Now, I'm not sitting here saying that the Bears are going to have a magical season like the Commanders did, by any stretch of the imagination.

At the end of the day, winning in the NFL is a hard thing to do, even if it's against some subpar teams. We've seen multiple times this season that it hasn't mattered whether a team's record is good or bad. 

So what if Chicago needed last-minute heroics against teams like the Raiders, Commanders, Bengals, Giants and Vikings? The Bears are still rising to the occasion and executing when they need to. 

Either way, the Bears have been able to win no matter what and that's the important thing. 

The Pittsburgh Steelers offer a unique challenge for the Bears, as they are 6-4 entering Sunday's game. We'll see if Chicago can beat a team with a winning record on Sunday, live from Soldier Field at noon CT on CBS.