CHICAGO
Week 13 result: Chicago 24, Philadelphia 15
NFC playoff picture: No. 1
Chicago’s playoff probability percentage stands at 76 percent.
(Next Gen Stats’ playoff probability simulates the remainder of the NFL season 10,000 times to estimate every team’s chances of making the playoffs)
Remaining schedule: at Green Bay, vs. Cleveland, vs. Green Bay, at San Francisco, vs. Detroit
Quotable: “Just really proud of everybody involved,” Bears head coach Ben Johnson told chicagobears.com after Friday’s win over the defending Super Bowl champions. “Short week, we really haven’t had one of those yet as a team. I thought the coaching staff did a great job putting a sound plan together.
“We knew it was going to be a race trying to get everything in and kind of harping on the guys that the details were going to be the difference here this week and the team that made the least number of mistakes was probably going to win this game. Fortunately for us, we felt like that fell in our favor.”
Twentyman: What a November for Ben Johnson and the Chicago Bears. A 5-0 record in the month has moved Chicago to the top spot in the NFC North and the No. 2 seed in the NFC playoff picture. Chicago’s offense ranks in the top eight in the league in points (26.1) and yards (374.3) but their biggest flex is the fact that they are the No. 1 rushing team in the league, averaging 153.8 yards per game on the ground. Defensively, Chicago is very optimistic with 26 takeaways and 17 interceptions, the most in the NFL in both categories.
The Bears and Packers play twice over the next three weeks and that will set the stage for what could be a wild NFC North title race the final two weeks of the season. It’s been 15 years since the Bears last won at least nine of their first 12 games. The 2010 team opened 9-3 and won the NFC North title with an 11-5 record and advanced to the NFC Championship Game.
Next up: at Green Bay (8-3-1), Sun., Dec. 7, 4:25 p.m.