Bear Digest

Looking ahead to a potential Bears top seed and playoff scenarios

Analysis: Everything remains open for the Bears even with a loss to Green Bay Saturday night in Week 16, but it all can seem so much easier with a victory.
Gene Chamberlain|
Christian Watson scores against the Bears in the Week 14 game Green Bay won 28-21.
Christian Watson scores against the Bears in the Week 14 game Green Bay won 28-21. | Sarah Kloepping/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

It's easy to look at the playoff scenario and fall into a panic over what could happen to the Bears with a second loss Saturday night to Green Bay.

It's also not difficult to look at their situation and see a team with a good chance to emerge not with the No. 2 seed like they currently own, but even the No. 1 seed.

Beating out Seattle for the top spot doesn't look far-fetched if you accept the premise that the Bears can also beat the Packers in a showdown, as oddmakers say. They come in on game day as 1 1/2-point favorites over the Packers, according to DraftKings. This rarity is a flip from before game week, and is fueled by Green Bay's loss of Micah Parsons.

If the Bears can beat Green Bay, it stands to reason they could beat San Francisco and Detroit to close the season.

Winning on the road over the 49ers is never easy, especially for the Bears. However, beating Green Bay always seems like an even more impossible dream for them.

Then there is the potential roadblock at the end of facing Ben Johnson's former team, the Lions, who already beat the Bears 52-21 in Week 2. The cold weather always gets factored in against Jared Goff, and the Lions are without tight end  Sam LaPorta and cornerback Terrion Arnold. They don't have safety Kerby Joseph for this week's game and they're fighting for their playoff lives against Pittsburgh.

Put all of those together and losing all three seems possible. But so does winning all three.

It truly is a situation in the NFC this year where nothing is certain.

There actually are even scenarios where the Bears could take top seed at 12-5 if they lose to the Packers.

Ben Johnson always says the Bears play each week to go 1-0 and can't look ahead. He’s right, especially this year in the NFC.

But you can look ahead, and here's why top seed looks entirely possible for the Bears if they can run the table.

Beating out Seattle

Even though the Bears trail Seattle by a game, they can still have a chance to take top seed by winning out. The final two Seahawks games are on the road and at teams still in playoff contention—the Panthers and 49ers. The 49ers might need to win every remaining game simply to get into the postseason. The Panthers' only realistic route into the playoffs is by beating out Tampa Bay for the NFC South title, and they need as many wins as possible for that.

Assuming Seattle simply loses one game and the Bears tied Seattle for first at 13-4, the Bears win the tiebreaker based on better conference record.

The Seahawks' losses all came to NFC teams. One Bears loss came to an AFC team.

Beating out the Rams

If the Rams were to win their last two over punching bags Atlanta and Arizona and tie the Bears at 13-4, the Bears win out that scenario for the same reason they win the tiebreaker over Seattle at 13-4. All of the Rams' losses came against NFC teams.

Three-way tie for No. 1

Should the Bears, Rams and Seahawks all finish tied at 13-4 with the Rams beating the Falcons and Arizona, and Seahawks losing either to the Panthers or 49ers, the Bears win the tiebreaker.

Ties of three or more teams for seeding or wild cards are broken first by breaking ties within the same division. Head-to-head ties between the Rams and Seahawks get broken first, and either team ultimately loses a head-to-head tiebreaker to the Bears at 13-4.

What about the 49ers?

The Bears obviously can take care of that one by beating the 49ers on Dec. 28. Then the 49ers could finish no better than 12-5. If the Bears don't beat the 49ers, they would lose the tiebreaker to them.

Also, of the four 49ers losses, two came against AFC teams and the Bears lost one to an AFC team. The Bears' NFC record would be worse than San Francisco's.

That game in San Francisco is so critical in a few ways.

Winning NFC North with loss to Packers

If the Bears lose to the Packers, they can still win the division even though Green Bay would be 5-0 in divisional games.

First, the Packers would need to lose to Baltimore or the Vikings after they beat the Bears.

The tie Green Bay had with Dallas makes it so the Bears can regain the edge again in the North even by going 0-2 against Green Bay.

The Packers losing to Baltimore isn't a wild stretch of the imagination. They also could lose to the Vikings in Minnesota to close the regular season. The Vikings had their brief stretch when they collapsed once their playoff chances looked over.  They have since bounced back and are playing well as J.J. McCarthy improved.

So, this showdown Saturday night isn't really the end game for a Bears NFC North title, as long as they don't lose again after that one.

Top seed at 12-5

If they lose to the Packers, they still take top seed if ...

  • They win their last two.
  • Green Bay loses to Minnesota OR Baltimore.
  • The Seahawks lose to Carolina AND San Francisco.
  • The Rams lose to either Arizona OR Atlanta.

The playoff payoff

So often playoff pictures are nearly in full focus with three games remaining, but there still remains so much to be decided that no one can make assumptions about anything.

The only thing the Bears really can do is what Johnson has told them all along and that's go 1-0 each week.

Looking too far ahead to possible playoff matches, then, is totally out of the question.

However, there is one prevailing trend in that direction and it is this game Saturday night is only the second of three Bears-Packers games.

Since taking first seed is unlikely for the Bears even with a win, they're most likely coming into the playoffs as a No. 2 seed. They would host the seventh seed and the percentages say it would be Green Bay.

If they lose Saturday to Green Bay, the percentages say the Bears take the seventh seed and the Packers the second seed. Then they play the Packers in the wild-card round at Lambeau Field.

Winning that top seed looks so important now because it not only would give the Bears home field throughout the NFC playoffs, but it gives them a week off so they could possibly even get back Kyler Gordon and heal other players to begin the postseason.

And it can also prevent a third game with Green Bay.   

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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.