Wait, wasn’t the NFC North supposed to be horrible?
If the season were to end today, three teams in the division — all but the Bears — would make the playoffs:
• The 9-3 Lions are one game out of the No. 1 overall spot in the NFC playoffs. They’re in the midst of their best 12-game start since 1962, when the Lions went 10-2. They have the fourth-best odds to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.
• The 6-6 Packers have won three-straight games — against the Chargers, Lions and, on Sunday night, the Chiefs. Three of their last five games this year are against teams in the bottom five of the NFL — including the Bears in the season finale.
• The 6-6 Vikings have won five of seven — including against the elite 49ers — and are expected to get Justin Jefferson, the best receiver in the NFL, back from a hamstring injury this week.
“It seems like everybody’s improving, right?” Bears coach Matt Eberflus said Monday after his players returned from their bye week. “And that’s obviously a challenge for everybody in the division — to play well each week.
“The NFL’s set up that way. They play divisional games at the end and they set it up that way on purpose. We’re going to have to play good football at the end.”
That starts Sunday at Soldier Field when the Bears play the Lions, whose only losses in regulation this season have been to the Ravens and, on Thanksgiving, the aforementioned Packers.
A Packers finale that at the start of the season seemed winnable for the Bears — there was a possibility Green Bay, if bad enough, would tank that game to try to draft a quarterback to replace Jordan Love — now looks anything but.
“It’s kind of young throughout the division,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “But [there’s] a lot of talent and a lot of teams on the rise. The competition’s definitely taken a step up.”
The NFC North is one of four divisions with three teams who are .500 or better. That seemed unlikely earlier this season. Through the first five weeks, the Bears and Vikings had one win apiece. The Packers had two. Since then, the Vikings are 5-2, including a win against the 49ers; the Packers are 4-3 with a win against Chiefs; and the Bears 3-4. The Lions are 5-2 in the same span.
For the Bears, perhaps the most alarming part of the NFC North surge is the uptick in Love’s play. After appearing to be a lost cause — he had passer ratings below 72.1 in five of his first nine starts — he’s found himself during their three-game win streak, throwing for 857 yards, eight touchdowns, no interceptions and a 116.94 passer rating.
If Love can replicate that run, the Bears will go back to a familiar position — fearing a Packers quarterback will torture them for the next decade.
“The Vikings got on a little bit of a roll there before playing us,” Kmet said. “Detroit’s been doing their thing all season and their offense is pretty good.
“Watching Green Bay the past three weeks, the quarterback’s been playing really well there. They’re really clicking, and they’ve always had a really good defense.”
Bears players haven’t dropped the dream of pushing for a playoff spot by going 9-8, even though finishing the season on a six-game winning streak would match their win total from the previous year-and-a-half before the Vikings game.
The Bears have yet to win two-straight games under Eberflus, though that could change Sunday.
“I’m treating it like we’re in playoff mode now,” Kmet said. “I think five very winnable games here to end the season. Who knows what can happen at 9-8?”
To have any prayer, though, the Bears have to pass their peers in a division that’s a lot tougher than it seemed midway through the season. Everyone else in the North is getting better. The Bears have to find a way to do the same, but at a faster rate, to catch up.
“That’s the general path of the NFL — I think everyone starts playing their best football,” linebacker T.J. Edwards said. “Obviously, you get more reps and there’s more chemistry being built within new schemes, new players and things like that. So everyone feels a lot more comfortable at this time.
“You see a lot of good football being played, and you see a lot of games going down to the wire. You see that, at the end of the game, it’s who can make those big plays to seal it. We got the guys to do that on our team.”
