The temptation after the Bears’ playoff loss was to believe their surprising 11-5 season had been a mirage, a fantasy brought on by the NFL’s unbalanced scheduling and emphasis on parity. Their flop after the week off they’d earned as one of the top two teams in the NFC was a rerun of their last playoff appearance in 2001, when they were beaten after a 13-3 season earned them a first-round bye. Once again the Bears had bamboozled fans, embittered backers, and vindicated skeptics; criticism rained down on the players, the coaches, and the management. I was prepared to pile on myself. But then I reviewed my notes and began to appreciate just what this team had offered, for all its faults. Time spent with the Bears this season–at least after the White Sox ended their World Series run–was time well spent. The key is to appreciate the 2005 Bears for what they were rather than what they weren’t.
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The biggest obstacle to this is the 1985 Bears, who returned en masse to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their Super Bowl championship season and loomed over their present-day heirs like the Monsters of the Midway they were. Those Bears were not just a great sports team–many football experts still consider them the best in NFL history–but a cultural phenomenon, full of players with oversize personalities and guided by coaches who were no slouches either in that regard. You didn’t have to be a football fan or a sports fan to love those Bears.
So I went over this season’s notes and measured the Bears not against the overblown standard of the ’85 Bears but by whether they provided sporting entertainment of the sort this column has always appreciated–personality, a little drama, and beauty in style and execution. For various reasons I found myself satisfied.
The Bears have almost all their starters committed to multiyear contracts, giving them an opportunity to develop continuity that’s rare in the age of parity. They have much more promise than Jauron’s lightning-in-a-bottle 2001 team. Because injuries and other uncertainties can hobble the most promising young team, the Bears need to ask the Cubs about the dangers of coming close and settling for thoughts of next year. But remember–few expected this year’s Bears to even finish with a winning record. I fully intend to enjoy this club come what may and hope they win an NFL title sometime in the next five years. If they don’t, the 25th anniversary of the 1985 championship team will be, yes, unbearable.
