The Bears aren’t going to hold another convention this year.
The reason has more to do with round numbers — the franchise celebrated its 100th season with a fan festival last June— than it does what happened in the months afterward. Though Ted Phillips, the Bears’ president/CEO, understands why fans would think otherwise.
“Obviously, we didn’t deliver on the field ... ” Phillips said Tuesday. “We had an offseason celebration that the fans really just rallied around We appreciate that. So to go 8-8 after making the playoffs the year before was … it was unacceptable.”
The convention — in which past stars and current players were united in their belief the team was mere months from a Super Bowl berth — was just one of many coronations for a team that would almost immediately prove unworthy.
Remember when the Bears were booked for five prime-time games — plus a Thanksgiving contest and an overseas game?
Or when running back Tarik Cohen zipped into training camp in Polaris Slingshot and saying the Bears were trying to win “multiple” Super Bowls?
What about Soldier Field serving as the site for the NFL’s season opener, an honor usually reserved for the defending Super Bowl champion and not a team that lost as a home favorite in the first round of the playoffs? Or when coach Matt Nagy wore George Halas’ derby hat into the stadium?
How about when the team opened a remodeled Halas Hall that was so impressive that Virginia McCaskey said her father would have surmised the Bears “have no more excuses for not being the best?”
The franchise blew an opportunity for which it had waited all decade. Overhyped or not, the Bears had real momentum entering the 2019 season.
There’s no way they’re getting it back easily.
“The Bears were back,” chairman George McCaskey said. “And then to take a step back was especially disappointing.”
They proved a mess from Week 1, when the Bears lost 10-3 to the rival Packers in a game now-fired offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich called a “train wreck.” Their offense never straightened out — at no point during the season was it better than the fifth-worst in the NFL in points per game. Even when the Bears were 3-1, they never seemed pleased by their direction.
When the Bears won three straight to improve to 7-6, it had the feel of a garbage-time false positive. And it was.
A fan base thirsty for consistent success couldn’t be blamed for their excitement heading into the season. The Bears hadn’t — and still haven’t — posted back-to-back winning seasons since 2005-06. In seven seasons between the Bears’ last two playoff appearances, they finished fourth four times, third twice and, at 8-8, second once.
The time was now.
And now? The team was so off the mark, so irrelevant by midseason, that fans will have to see progress to believe it.
“This season,” general manager Ryan Pace said, “was about regression and inconsistencies in too way too many areas.”
Nothing he does this offseason will recapture the momentum from last offseason. He made no gains in that regard Tuesday, calling Mitch Trubisky the 2020 starter and defending him with enough vigor to spook any veteran quarterback who might hope to sign and have a fair competition for the starting job.
The Bears keeping Nagy as play-caller while firing four assistant coaches — three of them to try to fix a run game that ranked as one of the league’s worst — isn’t going to lengthen the season-ticket waiting list, either.
After such disappointment, even the Bears’ most ambitious moves of the offseason should be met by shrugging fans.
The next real chance to change their minds is nine months away — not at some convention, or press conference, or training camp move-in day.
