Bears are the new America's team
The hangover is real. Official. We all woke up the next morning knowing what had happened the night before. Forgetting nothing. Not feeling good about it, but with a smile on our collective faces. Knowing we had survived the night even as we lost the fight. Knowing what we had accomplished. Knowing what lies ahead.
If nothing else has proved itself to be fact over this post-Week 20 week, it has been that this will be the best Bears hangover we’ve had in precisely two decades. When the 2005 Kool-Aid we drank after that 11-5 regular season (won the North, lost in the divisional playoffs) got us to a 13-3 regular season (North title repeat topped with a Super Bowl appearance).
And it has been bad hangovers ever since. Until now.
Because the beautiful part of this hangover, why we are feeling no pain, why there’s no sorrow or regret: The Bears will win the same game they just lost next season. And quite possibly the game after that. And in a few to five years, a couple of final games of the season will be part of their claims. The feeling right now is as if the franchise just put the McCaskey Amex black card on the bar and screamed, “Drinks on us,” and all the bar is serving Jeppson’s Malort. Champagne in the back on ice. Just waiting.
And that’s why Ben Johnson’s “none of this season matters” moving forward coach-speak is totally understood but so off base and wrong at the same time. What just happened with and to the Bears these last three months matters because it’s the new foundation on which they stand. One city under Ben. And Ryan Poles. And Kevin Warren. Indivisible. With liberty and justice replaced with belief and promise. Fully understanding what, as a team, they’re capable of achieving and, more important, sustaining.
The bar is set. The bar is open.
Does it feel this way because of what this organization has taken (put?) us through over the last two to three decades? 1,000%, yes. And we in the Chi are not alone in this euphoric OnlyBears carryover. When you’re the team that’s the major reason more than 45 million on average (peaking at 52.6 million in overtime) watched the Rams game last week — and this week the data confirmed it as the most watched divisional-round game in the history of the NFL — that’s proof that the Bears no longer belong to just us. The hard reality is — and I might be one of the few to say this and maybe I, too, am too caught up in this moment — the Bears, this season, might have become America’s team.
No Cowboys. No Chiefs. No Patriots. The Bears are them now. Our ride-and-die with them no longer exclusive.
As a team with the fifth-most drops in the NFL, a team that ranked 29th in overall defense, a team that won its division but finished 2-4 in its division, a team whose QB’s three interceptions “doomed” it last week and with a $100 million wide receiver who is a part of a “miscommunication” that will linger forever in Bears history, a team that just lost its running backs coach, a team that embraced being cardiac like the Cubs once did lovable losing, there’s a reason none of that defines what the Bears have turned themselves into and come to mean.
The offensive core four of Caleb Williams, Colston Loveland, Kyle Monangai and Luther Burden III (three rookies and a second-year star chasing superstardom), the O-line (especially Joe Thuney and Darnell Wright), the takeaways, Johnson’s coaching transparency, their heaven/hell love affair with fourth downs, their contagious resolve to never give up on themselves in games overshadow all the “issues” they need to address before Sept. 10. If Poles can do anything in this offseason with the D-line close to what he did with the O-line last offseason, destiny could turn to destined.
All eyes on them now. The territory just got new. The words that will carry them (and us) through this offseason away from football come from something Williams wrote on his IG page: “Through ups n downs, from holidays n disasters, to love n hate. Sometimes you fall, sometimes you get knocked down. First, “GOOD”! Second, get up. Third, prepare. Lastly, go again on the road to glory.” He signed off “ICE.”
The second coming. Not trying to come in second. “Back to square one.” Johnson’s deliverance. One of many to come. It’s a new dawn, a new sunrise in Chicago. There are about to be many. This hangover — in the best way — already hits different.