Next Step for Bears Only Gets More Critical

The natural progression for the Bears next is winning in a close game at Minnesota to break an NFC North losing streak.

Either that, or it is collapsing completely to wallow in their own misery.

To their credit, no one at Halas Hall is hiding from what happened last week when they blew a game they dominated for the second time this season.

"It's hand in hand, right?" Bears coach Matt Eberflus said. "So it's really about us (coaches) doing a really good job of setting the players up to make the plays and putting them in position to make the plays and then the players going out and making those plays.

"You can watch that during the course of any NFL weekend, of the games we just saw, there's plays being made by the playmakers at the end of the game and the coaches are putting those guys in position do that. That's what closes out games."

A Dirty Dozen in the NFC North

It is what it is, but the transparency makes repeated losing within the NFC North no easier to take. After all, as GM Ryan Poles told everyone, the goal is to take the North and not give it back.

Winning one in that North might be a nice start. They have lost 12 straight in the division, the last win coming in Detroit on Thanksgiving with Andy Dalton at quarterback in 2021.

They haven't beaten the Vikings since a huge 33-27 win near the end of 2020 under Matt Nagy, one which keyed their run to a wild card berth.

There couldn't be a better time to accomplish it than after what happened last week.

"I think for the most part we showed who we were except until the end of the game," Justin Fields said. "Focus (is) on finishing better and finishing out the game when it counts and when a drive comes up, making that big play when it matters.

"But we're definitely excited for this opportunity. The Vikings, they have been playing great these past few weeks. Definitely excited for the opportunity we have on Monday night and get to go out there and ball out."

Last week went beyond losing a game they had won.

They finally did virtually everything Eberflus wanted from his team on the field last week. They took the ball away four times. They committed only one turnover themselves. They held the ball over 40 minutes. They only had seven penalties to five for the Lions, which is a victory considering they haven't had fewer penalties than an opponent in any game since Week 2. Justin Fields returned and they ran for a season-high 183 yards yet they made big plays in the passing game like a 39-yard TD pass to DJ Moore. They did everything right and led 26-14 with three minutes left.

The next step should be doing it.

Where They Go From Here

However, a loss of that kind can be totally devastating as much as uplifting.

In the locker room during the past week, Eddie Jackson reflected on the loss. He'd watched the Packers dominate the Lions on Thanksgiving, just like his team had, take a big lead in Detroit, but then hold it.

"Man, it's crazy," Jackson said. "It's like, you just watch that game and see the position we was in. They (Green Bay) score points and they finish. It's something we couldn't get done.

"It just stings when you watch that game."

What they do with the pain is the key.

Have they applied it toward preparation mentally and physically to step forward from where they left off, or did the defeat drop them down to where the Vikings find it easy to roll past them for another NFC North win?

It couldn't be a better time for the Bears to actually win one in the North connsidering Minnesota is using a backup quarterback who hadn't been with the team until midseason, Justin Jefferson is either out or trying to return totally out of sync with the offense and a new QB from rust and the blitzing Vikings defense of Brian Flores gave up critical scores of their own last week in losing to Denver.

The Bears coaching staff seems to be under close scrutiny in Year 2 of a rebuild because they've taken what are suspected to be much better players than they had last year and produced the same number of wins through 11 games as last year through 11 games.

Late Season Salvation or Doom

Teams like the Lions and Bengals have taken late-season turnarounds and stepped up another level the next season.

There is every hope by the Bears they can make this happen, but without some sort of pulse within divisional games, without a late-season run, then there is every reason to believe new team president Kevin Warren would divert attention from a stadium quest now strangely dormant and focus it on replacing his coach, if not the coach and GM.

In fact, this past week SI.com's Albert Breer for the second straight week answered Chicago inquiries in his mailbag about the coaching situation by making it sound as if he thought Warren would be dumping both Eberflus and Poles after this season.

"I think he is motivated to see what he can do with is own guys in there," Breer said at the end of his video mailbag.

Breer thinks the future of Fields is uncertain because the decision makers' futures are uncertain.

True that.

It all is intertwined: Matt Eberflus' future, Ryan Poles' future, the quarterback situation and Justin Fields and Warren's status as chief decision maker nearing the end of a one-year examination of what he has. Maybe it's only appropriate it could come to a head at a stadium Warren had a huge hand in building.

With a late winning streak in the division, a strong finish to what has been a disappointment of a season, any action by Warren to dump people could look like an invitation to disaster.

The Bears made all those salary cap moves last year knowing it would take a while to rebuild the talent supply and start winning. And then Warren would be impatient enough to get rid of everyone just when they started winning?

It would seem unlikely.

However, those remaining games in the NFC North are dwindling. The number of opportunities to stack wins in the division or out of it are disappearing as well. If the Bears are going to start this idea of a late turnaround, it has to happen now.

"Yeah, it's a big game, right?" Eberflus said. "The next game is always the biggest game. The guys are excited about playing on Monday night and they are always big."

This one, for the Bears, looks bigger than the last one, and the next one will be bigger yet.

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