Fourth-wave sports take culture has found a new frontier: the delay take.

I could have ripped that the Chicago Bears were the Super Bowl favorite after their monstrous win over the Seattle Seahawks on Monday Night Football, when I and the rest of the world saw Jeffrey Simmons and Montez Sweat go to town on the defending champs while Caleb Williams, D’Andre Swift and their army of pass catchers diced up Seattle’s vaunted defense like expert fugu sushi chefs who are specially trained to cut up pufferfish in a specific way so that instead of killing the person, it becomes a delicious delicacy. But I didn’t.

I delayed the take until after one of the most ridiculous, out-of-control carnival explosions of a football game I’ve ever seen, and I’m still going to tell you the Chicago Bears should be Super Bowl favorites, because it’s still what I believe, it’s still what I saw on Sunday Night Football, and now? I think the take got a lot more interesting because Caleb Williams’ four interceptions against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the general drunkenness of that game gave us some glorious nuance to apply to the take. In five years, everyone will be doing delay takes.

The Bears are not Super Bowl favorites, at least according to betting markets, though it’s a shockingly tight top four; on FanDuel, the Bears sit at 8 to 1, trailing only the 49ers and Buffalo Bills, tied for top odds at 6 to 1. That’s one of the tighter betting ecosystems I can remember this far into the season, and reflects the lack of an assumed institutional favorite like the New England Patriots of old, the Kansas City Chiefs of less-old and the Los Angeles Rams of what-was-supposed-to-be-right-now. The Jacksonville Jaguars, who right before I started writing this traded for Jessie Bates III, are right on the Bears’ heels at +850.

But I think Chicago should be ahead of Buffalo and San Francisco, even after Sunday’s fascinating exercise in seeing how many times you can turn the ball over and still win the game. The internet was ready and waiting to unload its worst insults on Drake Maye for his three interceptions against the Green Bay Packers in the Patriots’ blowout loss, but then Caleb decided to throw four and win, causing mass confusion.

Most of that was because the Buccaneers never seriously threatened any kind of downfield passing game, and for Tampa Bay to win the turnover margin by three and lose suggests a total mismatch of offensive ability. The Bears couldn’t always move the ball when they needed to on Sunday night, but they could move it enough to overwhelm an opposing offense that just had nothing doing.

That tepid endorsement isn’t much of a reason to anoint them Super Bowl favorites, but that’s their offensive floor; their ceiling is, put simply, the most explosive and unstoppable attack in the NFL, with Luther Burden III slicing through the middle of the field and Rome Odunze winning outside matchups. Swift continues to be excellent on balance this season even if he had an off night, and the return of Kyle Monangai should elevate this run offense to even greater heights.

Because his arm was at some point surgically replaced with a bionic slingshot-railgun-beam-canon, Caleb Williams is one of very few quarterbacks in the NFL that can get you in and out of any bad situation. Like Drake Maye, he legitimately thinks he can fit any pass into any window and layer any throw over any number of defenders. And he does do that more often than you’d think … but because of his youth, you also get the “oh my god, what was he thinking?” interceptions. It’s not that he didn’t see the defender; he did, he just thought he could beat him.

But with the surrounding talent, the heights I’ve seen this offense reach with Caleb far outweigh any concern of these doing-too-much mistakes. And I’d rather have the quarterback who can get me out of a jam with Ben Johnson, a playcaller I think can call the right game, than not have the quarterback and just … be in the jam.

Then there’s the defense and the addition of Simmons, who brought this unit from solid to wow-they-might-be-a-problem overnight. I was not immediately in on the trade; I won’t pretend I was. They gave up two first-round picks for an interior defensive lineman, but he’s clearly uncorked everything about their pass rush and run-stopping abilities since showing up two weeks ago. And I have no reason to believe that won’t improve as everyone gets more familiar with each other.

The Bills and 49ers have defensive question marks that I simply don’t have with the Bears. Everyone will be back on the 49ers hype train in the NFC after they smoked the Raiders like a brisket coming off the bye, but I’m not willing to hand-waive that Falcons loss like it never happened; that was a jarring performance against a team that hasn’t been anything special. The Bills, meanwhile, have up 29 points in a loss to the Patriots and won two games in which they gave up 34 to the Rams and 30 to the Raiders. I’m not buying that just yet.

Finally, as I recently and boldly declared, I like aggressive teams that don’t want to punt. And the Bears are an aggressive team that will repeatedly put their opponent in an analytical straitjacket while backing it up with a defense I trust. That is a better investment thesis than I can say for anyone else so far, so invest I shall. Is it too early to bring back the “Super Bowl Shuffle” … yeah, it probably is.