It’s hard to call any Week 2 game a must-win, but it feels that way for the Bears going into their matchup with the Broncos on Sunday. If nothing else, it won’t be as easy as it once looked.
Coming off an embarrassing opener in which months of burgeoning expectations shriveled in a 10-3 loss to the Packers, the Bears are beyond eager to get back on the field — any field. And normally an opponent that went 6-10 last season and is in rebuilding mode would be ideal at a time like this.
But all the confidence surrounding the Bears in August came apart last week. They’re not going 16-0 anymore, and nothing is a given.
The Broncos are dangerous, and that starts with coach Vic Fangio’s knowledge of Matt Nagy, Mitch Trubisky and most of the offensive personnel. The majority of the Bears’ offense is back from last season, when Fangio was the defensive coordinator.
Fangio lost his NFL head-coaching debut Monday in Oakland, and his team surely will be primed to snap back in its home opener.
And the Broncos always have the advantage of the altitude in Denver. Bears safety Eddie Jackson said this week it won’t be much of an issue because the team is used to it after doing joint practices with Denver last summer, but that’s not how it works.
Nagy had the option — especially with a long break leading up to the game — to go early and hold at least one practice in Colorado but declined in favor of maintaining the team’s routine of practicing Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at Halas Hall.
“No, no, zero shot of that,” Nagy said. “We stick to our schedule. If we were to go out there and do something early, it would be the Friday before that, and it would just end up changing the habits that we know.”
He wants to preserve as much normalcy as he can, particularly in a season already loaded with schedule oddities.
The Bears have three Thursday games, play on ‘‘Monday Night Football’’ next week and will not play a normal noon game on a Sunday until Week 8. The only game they intend to travel early for is the Oct. 6 game against the Raiders in London.
The two teams the Bears figure to battle in the NFC North, the Vikings and Packers, also play the Broncos this year, but neither has to play in Denver. It’s another schedule quirk with which the Bears must contend, and it would sting to lose a matchup that looks to be a win for their division rivals.
The Bears’ schedule, by the way, is one of the toughest and gets much more difficult after the bye week. That’s why this first month is so important, and why they can ill afford an 0-2 start.
That tired stat about 90 percent of 0-2 teams failing to make the postseason isn’t the concern here. The Bears know they have a playoff team regardless of whether they win this week, but this is a team with mile-high aspirations and it doesn’t want to be sneaking into the playoffs as a wild card.
The Bears are aiming for the Super Bowl, and it always helps to have that first-round bye and home-field advantage. With plenty of tough opponents — the Saints, Chargers, Rams and Chiefs among them — looming, they can’t take a loss in Denver.
The way they react Sunday should be revealing.
It’ll be a physical test for the defense because of the thin air, and a mental one after grinding out a tremendous performance against the Packers with nothing to show for it. There’s much more to prove for Trubisky and the offense, and anything less than a convincing rebound will be alarming.
