That’s it. I’ve seen enough.
Sound the trumpets, raise the banners, plan the parade route. The Chicago Bears have won yet another offseason.
Like a cable network on election night, I’m calling it.
While the Bears famously haven’t won a Super Bowl since their shufflin’ days, Chicago’s charter franchise is a perennial contender from January through April — congrats to general manager Ryan Poles for a third consecutive championship-caliber offseason — so this is nothing unique. But what’s different is what this winning winter looks and feels like.
The words that come to mind are “actual progress.”
Sarcasm is natural when discussing the Bears — in season or off — but it’s hard to be dismissive of what the Bears have done since winning their season finale in Green Bay.
You can laugh at the hope and optimism of Bears fans right now, you can point out Poles’ many, many mistakes that have the team in a position of being this needy, but you can’t argue that Poles hasn’t been attacking the team’s many, many weaknesses with a little pep in his step. He looks a lot smarter when he’s working with Ben Johnson, that’s for sure.
From signing Johnson to a coaching megacontract and allocating enough money to assistant coaches to attacking the team’s foundational weaknesses before the draft, the Bears are doing real work to erase last season’s 5-12 disaster from our memory.
So yes, it’s easy to make fun of the Bears’ penchant for winning offseasons — and I rarely pass up an opportunity to make fun of the Bears for anything — but don’t dismiss these moves as false hustle or NFL March Madness.
Nothing wrong with starting a rehab project from the foundation up.
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Why the Bears winning another offseason actually feels real this time