Bear Digest

Winning against weaker schedule makes Bears more real than losing

Analysis: The Bears can only play who is on their schedule and if they faced weaker defenses, they'll get the chance to prove themselves down the stretch.
Gene Chamberlain|
Caleb Williams: "We know we're real."
Caleb Williams: "We know we're real." | Mike Dinovo-Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

At 6-3, the Bears have wedged themselves into the conversation for the NFC playoffs and nothing more.

Actually, the national debate seems to be whether the Bears are "real" or not.

Of course they're for real because a team is who their record says they are, as Lovie Smith used to like to say. Denny Green found this out the hard way on a Monday night almost 20 years ago.

"They are who we thought they were." No they weren't because they went to the Super  Bowl and the Cardinals sure didn't.

It's strange but many of those questioning whether these Bears really are a team to consider capable of a playoff run are not the same ones who wondered the same about Washington last year when they should have.

This year's Commanders?

The Commanders had even less working on their behalf than the Bears do now and they made it to a conference title game. They were in the first year of the rebuild, with all new inexperienced ownership, a rookie quarterback, a rebuilt defense led by an ancient linebacker. A fateful mistake by Tyrique Stevenson on the Hail Mary pass thrust them into the playoff picture. Now they're 3-7.

The Bears have done it this year by building a young offense capable of scoring quickly in many ways. They can come back, they can play defense and could do so even more effectively with a few more healthy players.

They have flaws but they're hardly a joke. They're a team built toward the future but possibly ahead of their time.

"We'll take them as they come," Ben Johnson said after the last win. "Once again, we found a way to win, and that's the most important thing.”

The Bears' schedule is the reason for skepticism.

Maybe next time they could ask to play harder teams early to satisfy everyone, but it doesn't work that way in the NFL. You play them as they come.

Who they played does matter

They played against four defenses ranked in the top half of the league. Those would be Minnesota (12th), Detroit (7th), Las Vegas (15th) and New Orleans (13th).

However, there's no denying the Bears' offense benefited by facing several weaker defenses.

They've played five defenses ranked in the bottom half of the league, but these were all defenses not only in the bottom half but also near the bottom, period.

  • The Giants are ranked 29th on defense, including 31st against the run.
  • The Bengals have the worst defense and are last against the run.
  • The Commanders are 30th on defense and are next to last against the pass.
  • Dallas is next to last (31st) on defense, including 29th against the pass and 28th against the run.
  • Baltimore normally is one of the better defenses in the league and is playing well now  but is 26th overall, 27th against the pass, based only on their poor start. They just got done shutting down the Vikings and are 4-5 after a 1-5 start.

What also needs to be remembered is part of the reason those defenses rank so poorly is they played the Bears' offense and gave up a ton of yards and/or points to Caleb Williams and company.

If this was later in the year when they've played 14 or 15 games, the impact of one game against the Bears' offense would be minimized. However, they've still only played nine or 10 games and statistically it means more.

Weak schedule but they won

All things told, there is no denying the schedule did favor the Bears to this point.

It didn't look that way necessarily when the season started. Dallas was supposed to be better. Washington was in the NFC championship game. Four teams they've played were in the playoffs last year.

Calling the Bears pretenders because they've gone 6-3 against the schedule is jumping to the wrong conclusion. That's because they're definitely a more legitimate playoff contender than if they had lost to some of the weaker teams they played.

  • They didn't lose consecutive games at home or to Carolina or to Cleveland, like the Packers.
  • They didn't play offense so poorly the head coach took over play calling from the offensive coordinator like the Lions.
  • They didn't commit eight false starts and lose for the fifth time in nine games like Minnesota.

Instead, they were coming from behind two straight weeks and four times this season to win like a team of destiny does.

Is that real?

Only the final eight games will tell. If it isn't, the Bears at least will be able to go into the offseason knowing they've won more games than the previous year, that their head coach really does know offense and calling plays, and that their quarterback can run AND throw while he rallies them in fourth quarters. They also have a defense not afraid to take risks to take away the ball at a league-leading pace.

Those are all good foundation pieces for a rise long term in the NFC North.

Whether it's enough for a rise to title status this year will require going through a gauntlet of opponents at season's end, not through a bunch of mindless conjecture in Week 11.

They'll take it week by week in a week-to-week league and perhaps emerge as the surprise team of the year in the NFC.

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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.