However you see the Bears’ future shaping up, no matter where you fall on the hope-nope spectrum, it’s hard to disagree with the contention that 2023 hasn’t been a lot of fun.
Even the victories have been short on excitement. You know what I’m talking about if you watched the Bears’ 12-10 yawner over Minnesota two weeks ago. You know what I’m talking about provided the catatonia has worn off.
And then came Sunday.
The Bears were a blast.
There’s nothing wrong with looking for signs of progress from a football team or analyzing every play on a microscope slide, but entertainment value matters, too. The Bears beat the Lions 28-13 at Soldier Field, and it was compelling, captivating and, yes, fun. I didn’t realize how much I missed fun until I was in the middle of Sunday’s game.
Wide receiver DJ Moore scored on a trick-play run on the first drive of the game, and the tone was set. School was in session, but instead of teachers, books and dirty looks from sports columnists, this was going to be a field trip.
Fun was Justin Fields making the Lions look silly with his ability to escape pressure, and fun was Fields looking like a real, live throwing quarterback. He rushed for 58 yards and a touchdown, and threw for 223 yards and a touchdown.
Fun was watching Fields walk away relatively unscathed from Detroit’s dangerous pass rush. And, if we’re being twistedly honest, fun was seeing if he’d get up. He did, again and again.
Fun was Fields hitting Moore for a 38-yard touchdown in the third quarter, taking advantage of a free play on a Lions offside penalty,. On fourth-and-13. Ridiculous.
Fun was the Bears intercepting Jared Goff two times, giving them five in two games against the Lions quarterback this season. If Goff were offered the opportunity to bundle his games going forward, he’d drop the Bears.
Fun was the defense shutting down the Lions on the first five drives of the second half, which included a lost Goff fumble and a stop on fourth-and-1.
Fun was safety Jaquan Brisker having 17 tackles. He was everywhere he wanted to be, everywhere the Lions didn’t want him to be and, apparently, everywhere all at once.
Fun was the Bears winning back-to-back games for the first time in Matt Eberflus’ tenure as head coach.
Fun was the Bears holding onto a big lead, unlike three weeks ago, when they blew a 12-point fourth-quarter advantage and lost to the Lions.
The Bears outscored Detroit 18-0 in the second half Sunday. That shouldn’t be glossed over. Their habit of late has been to score early on scripted plays and then be less than impressive without that structure. There was a consistency to their approach this time. Consistency: also fun.
It was nice to watch a Bears game without the weight of What It All Means hanging over everything. It was possible to marvel at some of Fields’ needle-threaders without wondering what it meant for his future. Here was a quarterback having fun out there. Did his looseness and our enjoyment have something to do with the fact he had no interceptions Sunday? Absolutely. More of that, please.
Detroit came into the game with a 9-3 record, the Bears with a 4-8 record. Then the clock started, and you never would have known who was who.
The Fox halftime crew gushed about Fields’ athleticism as if it were a news flash. His ability to run is not a revelation. His ability to throw accurate passes has been a massive question mark since he arrived in Chicago three seasons ago. He was excellent at it Sunday. A few of those passes looked ill-advised until they dropped onto the fingertips of his receivers. Then they looked like great throws. There’s a fine line between excellence and crazy town for NFL quarterbacks, and Fields has been on the wrong side a lot in his career. But he gets props for doing Sunday what we praise the great ones for doing.
“Like Cole (Kmet) said, we probably could have put up 40 if … we could have executed better,’’ Fields said.
These aren’t heady days for the Bears just yet, but this was a heady day. It’ll do.
“It’s been a long time coming, to win two in a row, and it’s two division opponents, which is big,’’ Eberflus said. “The guys are super excited. But we could feel this coming. The improvement was happening over time.’’
Several of the questions at the post-game press conference centered on what the winning “streak’’ could do for the Bears in the final four games of the season. I’ll call it a success if the carryover has to do with the entertainment level.
The Bears have crossed over into the living. Let’s keep it that way.
