Like most fans, I wasn\u2019t ready for the Chicago Bears\u2019 season to come to an end.<\/p>\n
This has been an incredibly fun ride full of ups and downs, and the Divisional playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams provided more of the same.<\/p>\n
Watching the replay today stung because there were so many missed opportunities for the Bears in that game.<\/p>\n
They were right there, and while hindsight needs context, and isn\u2019t always a fair indication when playing the What If game, there were some unfortunate drops, mistakes, and questionable decisions that the Bears will need to study and learn from this offseason.<\/p>\n
A lot of Chicago fans are comparing this Bears season to the Cubs\u2019 2015 season, when manager Joe Maddon, in his first year in Chicago, led them to 97 wins and the playoffs, but had a disappointing end. Many felt the Cubs were a year early that season, and we all know what happened in 2016.<\/p>\n
For a Bears parallel, this season felt like 1984 or 2005, with the Bears falling short of their ultimate goal before reaching the Super Bowl the following year.<\/p>\n
I know there are no guarantees that the Bears can get back to the postseason, but with Ben Johnson and Caleb Williams just beginning their partnership, Chicago\u2019s championship window is wide open.<\/p>\n
Join JB and me live for our latest Bear & Balanced at 6:00 p.m. CT in the embed right here, or head over to our YouTube channel to join in on the show.<\/p>\n
Podcast version right here:<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s our usual bullet point outline of Bear & Balanced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like most fans, I wasn\u2019t ready for the Chicago Bears\u2019 season to come to an end. This has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[84505,7766,741,7768,7],"class_list":["post-690001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-chicago-bears-scores-and-results","tag-chicago-bears-game-information","tag-chicago-bears-news","tag-chicago-bears-podcasts-videos","tag-football"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}