Of course everyone wants to talk about Fields and the offense, but I think we owe the defense a lot of credit.
They have made exponential improvement since the beginning of the season. I remember watching the first few games this year and thinking to myself that I had never seen a Bears defense as terrible in my life. They really turned it around though. The pass rush is a night and day difference (the addition of sweat helps a lot) and they’ve made tremendous improvement on 3rd and 4th downs which they really struggled with earlier in the season.
They shined this game in particular, but they have honestly been playing very well the last few weeks. There’s still some things that need to be worked out, namely our pass coverage in the secondary, but they are really coming together as a unit. Most importantly, they do the #1 thing a defense needs to do: they put us in positions to win games. Very excited about the future of this unit, still wish we could have extended JJ though.
Crazy to think that we could easily be right in the mix this year. Even going beyond the Broncos and Lions games, we could have easily (and probably should have) beat the Vikings the first time and the Saints. If fields didn’t get hurt, we could be in a very different spot right now. We could be going into the bye week 8-4 and be fighting for a playoff spot.
This doesn’t mean much because it’s all just a big “what if” but it definitely gets me excited for the future. Don’t get me wrong, we still suck and it’s been ugly, but I’ve seen a lot of improvement throughout the year and to see some light in the middle of the time we are still rebuilding is kinda nice. We may be closer to fielding a competitive team than I once thought