Bear Digest

Bears in the Super Bowl doesn't sound far-fetched based on history

Analysis: Teams come from nowhere in the NFL and always have. The same old teams in the running for a Lombardi Trophy is only something in the Chiefs era. That's over.
Gene Chamberlain|
DJ Moore makes the fateful 46-yard overtime catch for a touchdown to beat Green Bay.
DJ Moore makes the fateful 46-yard overtime catch for a touchdown to beat Green Bay. | Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

In this story:

Chicago Bears

It happens.

Miracle teams do surface, even in the NFL where it's somewhat limited because of the high degree of synchronization involved with each play, game and season.

It's for this main reason Bears fans can ignore all of the experts who will say this type of thing can't continue. Teams can't keep coming from behind at the end of games, even as Caleb Williams finishes authoring his sixth comeback win of the season.

At about the time the amazin' Mets ruled in baseball as supreme underdog champions, Joe Namath stood the NFL on its ear by taking a team to the AFL title and then a Super Bowl win as 17-point underdogs when they weren't even given much chance in preseason to win their own league.

Ancient history?

The Cincinnati Bengals were 6-10, 2-14 and 4-11-1 over three years and suddenly pop up in the Super Bowl after the 2021 season.

The Arizona freaking Cardinals hadn't had a winning season in a decade and their head coach was Ken Whisenhunt, yet they wound up in the Super Bowl after the 2008 season and only a last-second play prevented them from winning it.

The St. Louis Rams were a terrible team in 1998, and one year later they became "The Greatest Show on Turf."

The New England Patriots were 5-11 under failed former Browns coach Bill Belichick in 2000, then didn’t even have their starting quarterback available part of 2001 and won a Super Bowl with an upstart sixth-round draft pick at quarterback, Tom Brady.

The most dominant franchise of the 1980s wasn't that when it all started.

Bill Walsh had a team that had won 10 games from 1978-80. The 49ers won the Super Bowl in 1981 after the fabled Dwight Clark catch in the NFC championship game and went on to a dynasty.

Is that your Bears comp?

Ben Johnson is today's offensive wizard? He doesn't have the white hair like Walsh but he has plenty of offensive knowledge.

This sort of thing has happened so often in a league where parity is built into the rules governing playoff acquisition that the exception seems to be this past decade, where the same old teams keep showing up in the playoffs and Super Bowl.

Chiefs are done

The Chiefs, always the Chiefs. The Eagles. There's the 49ers and the Rams in that crucible known as the NFC West.

The Chiefs aren't the Chiefs any more, in case you haven’t noticed. The Eagles got exposed by the Bears. The Rams and 49ers are not even leading their division.

In a year when the odd and strange keep happening, when a quarterback who has trouble completing 60% is leading six comeback wins, is it a real stretch of the imagination to think this can't keep happening?

Caleb Williams’ wildly inconsistent play eventually will catch up to him, they say. It should have already, but a good team like the Packers will get him.

Whoops.

The Packers didn't beat the Bears, the Eagles didn't. The Steelers didn't.

It's time to start realizing this really could be that fabled miracle team like no one ever sees coming but keeps popping up in the NFL anyway.

Quarterbacks don't keep rallying teams late in games to win the way Williams has done with the Bears, though. Right?

In 1995 Jim Harbaugh became known as Captain Comeback because he had four game-winning drives and three fourth-quarter comebacks in the regular season, then had a possible fourth fourth-quarter comeback fall short when he couldn't connect with Aaron Bailey from the on a last-gasp 29-yard throw.

Williams passed that stuff up a long time ago, with his sixth fourth-quarter comeback and sixth game-winning TD pass last night.

Keep on saying the Bears can't continue this.

History says this is one of the greatest fallacies about the NFL.

Even if it all does explode in a playoff loss or a game short of the Super Bowl, it's been one wild ride and not one anyone will soon forget.

X: BearsOnSI

Published
Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.