‘FEELS LIKE US AGAIN’
Bears head to Green Bay with surge of confidence.
At the end of an exhilarating Thursday night, Bears safety Eddie Jackson found himself enjoying the rush, immersed in the positive energy pulsing through the locker room.
“Bears 31, Cowboys 24” felt a little different. It felt overdue. It felt energizing. It felt gratifying.
It was, at long last, a complete victory with productivity across all three phases.
“Oh, man,” Jackson said. “The whole game just felt right.”
After Jackson left Soldier Field on Dec. 5, he connected with his family and headed to River North for a late dinner at Chicago Cut. A plate of Colorado double-cut lamb chops and a sense of genuine fulfillment.
“It just felt good, man,” Jackson said.
“We were finally clicking. Plus, we had played three games in 12 days. So to come through that and get three wins and especially that last one, a big game in prime time … it was like a relief off your shoulders.”
Jackson kept thinking about the electricity he felt inside Soldier Field. He was struck by the buzz of the crowd and the confidence of his teammates and how every big play took things up a level.
He immediately thought back to the bright-lights, big-stakes home games in 2018. Prime-time wins over the Vikings and Rams. The playoff game against the Eagles.
“It felt like that,” Jackson said. “The high energy. The fun we were having. That vibe matters.”
The result did too.
“For me it was just kind of like: ‘Yes, baby. This feels like us again.’ ”
Don’t get it twisted. Jackson and his Bears teammates haven’t celebrated the victory over the Cowboys or their threegame winning streak as some sort of landmark breakthrough. They understand this season began with Super Bowl dreams, and as things stand, they remain playoff outsiders likely headed for an earlier-thananticipated winter vacation.
In a matter of weeks, an inevitable reflection process will take hold as the Bears zoom out on how a midseason tailspin derailed their January plans.
But even with all of that, this team’s ability to stay united, to keep itself focused, to remain solution-oriented and locked in on the present has become a major source of internal pride.
“Not once this season,” Jackson said, “has it felt like guys are pulling apart.”
That’s part of why the win over the Cowboys felt so satisfying. Packers coach Matt LaFleur called it “a dominating performance.” The Bears played at a high level and left with a surge of self-confidence to take forward into Sunday’s rivalry game against the Packers.
The power of now
It’s all too easy to treat the Bears’ recent success with an eye roll, casting it as a too-little-too-late rally that only adds to 2019’s sting. After all, every encouraging sign of growth the past several weeks has threatened to awaken the raw frustration of why this team’s advances couldn’t have occurred two or three games earlier.
But internally at Halas Hall, coaches and players have successfully steered around those “If only …” traps, owning their predicament and directing their concentration toward improvement efforts for that day, that week, the next game.
The Bears realize they can’t erase the Raiders’ 97-yard fourth-quarter touchdown drive in London.They can’t blow Eddy Pineiro’s 41-yard field-goal attempt to beat the Chargers a few feet to the right.They can’t undo a first half against the Eagles in which the offense gained only 9 yards.
There’s so little in it for them to wallow, to allow any “what might have been” regret to smother their forward-looking drive.
Players didn’t for one second enjoy that trying 55-day stretch during which they held only one “Club Dub” dance party. But they also recognize that extended losing stretches like the one they experienced can become divisive and unnerving. The temptation to check out constantly knocks. The urge to dole out blame must be quelled.
This group never went there.
“The biggest thing was we tried to look for solutions rather than pointing fingers,” center Cody Whitehair said. “That can be easier said than done. But it’s what we did. And that’s what helped us get through it.”
Coach Matt Nagy set the tone, leading with his natural positivity and honest feedback. In addressing players during the skid, Nagy made certain his messages were forthright.
“He came in and put it directly,” defensive backs coach Deshea Townsend said. “If you’re going to complain and moan, there’s not a place for you here. That makes it simple for a player. That’s the message you want your players to lead with.”
As the Bears plummeted to a low point, the coaches were curious to see how players would react. What did they find?
“It’s a group of grown men who don’t blink,” Townsend said.
Added Jackson: “We’ve got a special group of guys. High-character guys. Guys who love to compete. And guys who understand how to really stick together.
“That’s easier said than done. You can talk about that all you want, like, ‘Oh, yeah, we have these type of guys,’ and then when adversity hits, you suddenly see people start separating and running away from it.
“But for us, it was the opposite. When stuff hit the fan, this group got closer, kept faith in one another and kept going.”
Pressing matters
During this three-game winning streak, there has been an acknowledgment throughout Halas Hall that players are again playing loose and free and no longer pressing. Which, of course, is an admission of the obvious — that at one point this season, many players were pressing. Scuffling. Trying too hard.
That was easy to see with the naked eye, especially on offense, where the struggles were pronounced and unrelenting. Nagy was asked this week for his best guess on why that urge to press sneaked in.
“I’m not a psychologist,” he said. “But I would say that when you lose, it’s probably pretty normal for guys because everyone wants the same thing. They want to be really good at what they do. They want to win. That’s the objective of why we’re all here.
“And when you don’t win, it creates (questions) about what the issues are and what are the problems and how do you fix them. So everyone tries to find the solution. And when you can’t find it and then you lose, it just compounds.”
Many players had never experienced a season with such valid hope and hype. And in turn, many had never experienced such unexpected failure.
Quarterback Mitch Trubisky, for example, made only 13 college starts at North Carolina and never had been the face of an NFL franchise with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations. He also never had been the face of an NFL team’s disappointments.
The struggles plus the avalanche of criticism that followed tested the 25-yearold Trubisky like never before. He took his own swing this week at assessing why the team, and the offense in particular, had grown so uptight for long stretches.
“I don’t know exactly,” Trubisky said. “But we have a bunch of guys who care so much, and you tend to press when you’re not getting the results you want. And you have a bunch of people, including myself, who care so much and (yet) you don’t know what’s going wrong.”
‘It’s simply fight’
The Bears have three more games this season, including Sunday’s challenge at Lambeau Field. So it’s too early to assess how this year’s adversity and the push to get through it can help this team up the road.
This was never supposed to be a one-season window of opportunity. Realistically, the Bears should be positioned to be playoff contenders in 2020 and 2021 and 2022 and beyond.
Through that lens, their show of resolve could have potential payoff in a future pursuit of a championship.
“There’s definitely value to overcoming adversity like we have,” Jackson said. “Because the next time you face it, you know what it feels like and how to get through it.”
That might be an entirely unsatisfying consolation prize for a team that wanted its biggest rewards to come in the playoffs. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important.
“These guys have proven to me, and our staff, what they’re all about,” Nagy said. “Never once did they start pointing fingers. They never flinched. We’ve become closer through all of it.
“And regardless of what happens the rest of this year, I know this: I’ve learned a lot about who we are with the character (of this group). And I love that about them.”
Defensive lineman Akiem Hicks, who is scheduled to return Sunday from an eight-game injury absence, appreciates the mettle this team has shown to keep this season’s difficulties from becoming a spectacular unraveling.
“It’s fight. It’s simply fight,” Hicks said. “We were getting punched in the mouth. We were down. We were kicked. And we got up and we kept fighting back.
“Then we won a round. And then we won the next round. And we kept going. So the best way I can explain how we are in this position now is that the guys in here have a lot of fight in them.”
That fight was evident in the win over the Cowboys. So was an enthusiastic spirit that accompanied the triumph.
Creating a vibe
Well before Jackson dug in on his victory lamb chops, he spent his Thursday night making sure his confidence and verve were felt. You might have noticed the All-Pro safety racing off the sideline and enthusiastically lifting Trubisky into the air after the quarterback’s 23-yard fourth-quarter touchdown run had extended the Bears’ lead to 17 points.
But that wasn’t Jackson’s only celebratory outburst. When Allen Robinson scored two touchdowns in the first half, Jackson made sure to mob him. When Anthony Miller fought his way into the end zone on a 14-yard pass play to open the second half, Jackson darted toward that revelry as well.
“Last year,” Jackson said, “there was a lot of high energy and celebrations and fun. We kind of lost that in the beginning (of this season). I caught it myself. The offense would score and I’d be over on the bench just clapping and waiting for them to come back over to the sideline. Whereas last year, I used to be on the field. We all did. A guy would make a big play and we’d all be out there.” So where had that gone?
“I don’t know why it was missing,” Jackson said. “It just wasn’t there. It’s just something you can inadvertently get complacent with. I don’t know if we had such high expectations for ourselves that guys just lost the thrill of it or something. Maybe that was part of it. But no. Have fun. When a guy makes a play, go celebrate it. Bring that energy back.”
For now, the energy seems to be back. As enlivening as that win over the Cowboys was, an upset of the Packers would add to the vibe. With four wins in the last five games, the Bears head north feeling as if the rewards for their unity and focus are starting to come.