When the Bears get through their regular-season finale Sunday at the Packers, it’ll be a familiar routine: head back to Halas Hall, clear out the lockers and watch the playoffs on TV.
But amid that maddening monotony, hope is high.
General manager Ryan Poles has the Bears in a good spot. It’s easy to lose sight of that while drowning in the debate over what they should do with coach Matt Eberflus and quarterback Justin Fields. Poles is choosing between something that works and something that might work better.
That’s tremendously fortuitous.
The Bears could essentially do nothing and probably be an odds-on favorite to make the playoffs as a wild card next season. They could keep Eberflus and even keep the seemingly ill-fitting combination of Fields and offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and use their draft picks and free-agency money for additions, and they’d still be projected to be better than .500.
There’s minimal chance they’d actually be that complacent, but it’s a strong starting point for an offseason. That wasn’t the case when they were done with Mitch Trubisky after the 2019 season and Matt Nagy after 2021. They had no choice but to move on.
In Trubisky’s case, they tried, but couldn’t. They’d seen more than enough, but their resources were so depleted that all they could do was trade for Nick Foles.
Fields is far better than Trubisky. He has flaws, sure, but a much brighter outlook. No one worried when the Bears let Trubisky walk in free agency after 2020 that it’d come back to bite them. Fields could still have a good career, whether with the Bears or elsewhere.
The alternative is using the No. 1 pick in the draft to take Southern California quarterback Caleb Williams. He’s thought to be a once-every-few-years talent. Poles isn’t being forced into anything. He’s choosing between a good option and, potentially, a great one.
Likewise, if he and team president Kevin Warren call Eberflus into a conference room and ask him to defend his work, he’ll have some decent arguments. Nagy had no answers by the end of 2021.
Eberflus could point to momentum. He could show examples of player development under his watch. He could say — and this was the most problematic part for Nagy — that at least he figured out his side of the ball and the Bears are emerging as an elite defense.
Could Poles and Warren find someone more impressive? That’s possible. Maybe they’d shift to an offensive minded head coach. But the Bears’ trajectory looks good and Eberflus helped them redirect it.
His 10-23 record is brutal, but it’s skewed by going 3-14 last season with a thin roster in the first phase of Poles’ rebuild. This season has been disappointing, but the Bears would be 8-9 if they beat the Packers, and that’s quite a jump.
“We knew there was a long game to this,” Eberflus told the Sun-Times. “When you have that perspective at the start of it, it’s not like, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta spend all this money and do all this stuff right now.’ When you have that perspective, you’re able to handle the adversities that come.”
He maintained that the structure and system he implemented that first season was valuable, despite the losses. And now that a good portion of the roster is meant to be around long term, those players can convey the expectations to newcomers.
“Set the standards, hold people accountable, partner with the players and work together to improve this,” Eberflus said. “And as we improve talent, which we have... what you see is the product starting to improve.”
The uptick is discernible and promising. And the only reason for Poles to change any part of it is to accelerate and aim higher. So while this was another letdown and there are huge decisions on the horizon, the Bears’ future hasn’t been this bright in a long time.
