It’s not just general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy feeling the heat to win now. The Bears have several players running out of time in their own way.
This time last year, star pass rusher Khalil Mack talked about the pressure of heading toward 30 and knowing he had yet to do any serious winning.
“We ain’t got no time to waste,” he said as he pondered a spectacular individual career in which his teams have gone exactly .500 and picked up zero playoff wins.
Mack, like many Bears, thought last season was one of those rare opportunities make a run at a championship. Instead, it was obvious halfway through the season that wasn’t in their reach. They staggered to 8-8 and saw clearly how far away they were from contention when the Chiefs’ B-game was enough to thump them 26-3 at Soldier Field in late December.
The ticking of that internal clock, the one that haunts any veteran athlete still hunting a ring, has only gotten louder for Mack. It ticks for Akiem Hicks, too, as he heads into his 10th season having gotten no further than a single conference title game with the Patriots. Same for Jimmy Graham going into Year 11.
New safety Tashaun Gipson was part of the Jaguars’ surprising run to the AFC title game in 2018, but that’s the entirety of his playoff experience after eight seasons. Ted Ginn is nearing the end at 35 and played in the Super Bowl twice, but lost both times. Allen Robinson is six years in and his lone playoff game was the Double Doink.
Perhaps no one in the NFL exemplifies this frustration more than the Bears’ newest defensive weapon, Robert Quinn.
A former first-round pick and all-pro, he had one of the top 20 sack seasons ever and ranks 12th among active players. But he spent most of his career with Jeff Fisher and the middling Rams and has played in one playoff game — a loss to the Falcons in 2018.
“Chicago already had a great team and I just wanted to come to a place where I think I can add a little bit more,” Quinn said. “Plus, it’s known for its defense. Luckily, I play defense. I figured that was a great way to go.”
The Bears’ overwhelming defense, headed by the pass-rushing trio of Mack, Quinn and Hicks, is championship-caliber. It’s enough to give them a chance to win playoff games, but it’s hard to envision that carrying them without some help from the offense.
That’s been the problem the last two seasons. Since Nagy’s arrival, they have allowed the third-fewest points in the NFL but rank 21st — barely ahead of the Browns — in scoring. They have lost four games, playoffs included, when their defense held the opposition under 20 points.
They’re hoping several changes — potentially a new starting quarterback, a remodeled tight end room and an offensive line coach that Nagy believes can turn around an underachieving group — boost the offense to at least average. If the Bears pull that off, they could make the jump from forgettable to fearsome.
In the past decade, five teams went from missing the playoffs to a spot in the Super Bowl.
Some of those runs don’t correspond to the Bears’ situation — the 2019 49ers got Jimmy Garoppolo back from injury, the ’17 Eagles had a rookie quarterback the year before and the ’11 Giants were right around average throughout the Eli Manning era anyway — but a couple do.
The ’16 Falcons and ’10 Steelers didn’t change head coach or quarterback (the Bears might switch quarterbacks, but it’s nothing like the Broncos bringing in Peyton Manning, for example), but made a variety of necessary improvements throughout the roster and were as good as any team in the league those seasons. That’s what the Bears — especially their championship-hungry veterans — are betting on in 2020.
