GREEN BAY, Wis. — The great dream of this Bears season evaporated months ago, and the last lingering trace of it drifted away Sunday at Lambeau Field.
Mirroring their season at large, they exhausted every idea and made a late charge to keep it interesting before falling 21-13 to the Packers. The Bears’ loss, coupled with the Vikings’ blowout win hours later, eliminated them from playoff contention with two games remaining.
Their frenzied final play, which could’ve set up a chance to force overtime on a two-point conversion if they had scored, involved two laterals and came up one pitch short of reaching the end zone. But the Bears’ season officially died at the Green Bay 7-yard line.
“You look at all the things that happened before that play,” running back Tarik Cohen said. “Everybody on the outside is probably looking at the what-ifs on that play, but we as an offense look at what we could’ve done on the first drive, second drive, things early on.”
So this is how it ends, at the hands of Aaron Rodgers on a day when he looked uncharacteristically human. But what exactly ended?
It’s been such a long, dreary season that people forget how it all started. The Bears roared about the Super Bowl and the onset of a dynasty as they settled into their dorms in Bourbonnais. Turns out it’s a lot easier to talk about than to do.
“Last year was a really good year for us in a lot of different ways; Now this year has had its challenges,” coach Matt Nagy said. “But it’s made us mentally calloused. Nobody cares about that, but that’s what it does.
“We want to be better, but none of it’s for lack of effort. That’s the part of it that I appreciate. We’ve just gotta get back to the grind and do everything we can to change that.”
It’s a whole bunch of next-year talk. Should sound super familiar to Bears fans.
This team’s goal was never to sneak into the playoffs. That’s not what they sold you all offseason. Sure, it’d be an admirable achievement based on where they sat in October, but anything truly meaningful was already lost by then.
It’s like promising your kids a trip to Six Flags, then losing track of time and hoping they’ll accept going to the merry-go-round at the mall as a reasonable substitute. Hey, it’s better than sitting home.
Meanwhile, general manager Ryan Pace was on the team-run radio pre-game show addressing the topic of whether Nagy is actually doing a better job this season than when he went 12-4 and won Coach of the Year.
What are the chances of Pace getting a question like that in an actual press conference?
“Anything in life, when adversity hits you, that’s when your leadership shines through,” he said. “Matt’s handled every single moment with class, passion and confidence. It all trickles down from him. I know I say this a lot, but we’re fortunate to have him as our head coach.”
That’s a lovely quote, and certainly Nagy deserves credit for keeping the locker room intact, but he played his part in this dud. He supervises an offense that ranks 26th in points and 29th in yards.
Trubisky has looked better lately, but why did it take until December to turn him loose as a runner? And why all the regression in general after Nagy, a quarterback specialist, said all summer he was on track for a big season?
With the Bears on track for one of their weakest rushing seasons in the modern era, Nagy has four games with 18 or fewer attempts. Only five other teams can say that, and they’re all bad.
It’s natural, too, to wonder if a play or there would’ve changed it. The 17-16 home loss to the Chargers towers over them all, and Nagy misplayed the final field-goal attempt.
“All of us, including coaches, are going to look back [and say] there’s a lot of games that we shoulda won,” cornerback Prince Amukamara said. “It’s a learning lesson to this team that every game matters. If we woulda took care of business earlier, we wouldn’t have been in this position.”
As Nagy likes to say, though, it wasn’t just one thing.
And that’s where the Bears need to be realistic and admit to themselves that this team isn’t bits and pieces away from being a contender. Their defense remains one of the best in the league, but their offense is among the worst. It’ll take significant renovation to change that in 2020.
