This is no time to let the Bears laze about in their bye week
Note to the NFL office: No thanks. The Bears will just go on from here, doing what they’ve been doing the last couple of weeks, roaring along on the Big Bandwagon Momentum, which should be an express, not a local.
Bye week? The Bears don’t need no stinkin’ bye week. This is a clear case of Impetus Interruptus, forcing the Bears to take a week off from what is building nicely into a nifty little football season. Do you ask a bear to pause in mid-meal? Stand back, this beast bites.
The Bears are turning into this ambitious, full-service monster in front of our eyes, dynamic on defense, productive on offense, meeting challenges with confidence and road games with enthusiasm, changing from a cautious, uncertain bunch to a loose, intrepid, high-wire act, daring to win.
These are not your grandfather’s Bears, or even September’s Bears. This is a whole new variety of Bear.
One week it is the unearthing of D’Andre Swift and the next it is the rediscovery of Cole Kmet. What prize is behind Door No. 7 and why must we wait for it?
Quarterback Caleb Williams has about him an air of inevitability, growing better each week, displacing doubt with defiance, daring and accurate, the sort of quarterback other teams take for granted but for the Bears a rare promise kept.
More proof is needed, of course, more than two weeks’ worth of Williams’ dependability. All these wonderful Williams authenticators (four-touchdown games, 300-yard games, back-to-back victories, one from six time zones away, an expanding quarterback rating) are as much anticipation as confirmation.
The sooner we get to it the better. A bye week is an unwelcome intermission. You don’t stop just as the Earps are turning the corner toward the OK Corral, or pause the coin toss in midair in “No Country for Old Men,” or fade to black in the final “Sopranos.” Oh, wait.
The point is, we have to know what happens next. Wait two weeks for a matchup with the other rookie wonder, the other Heisman winner, the other franchise savior? Jayden Daniels or Caleb Williams? No. 2 and No. 1? Suspense tinkers. The game is moved until later in the day, Jim Nantz and Tony Romo are in the booth. This is worse than politics.
The thing Williams was supposed to be when drafted first, the next Patrick Mahomes, to sum up, (not forgetting the Bears could have had the original Mahomes) seems not too outrageous, though Super Bowls define the one while FedEx Air Player of the Week footnotes the other.
By the way, Mitch Trubisky was a FedEx winner twice and we know how that worked out. Still any recognition is encouraging and indicates that a Bears quarterback must be taken seriously instead of usually, that is to say, dismissively.
Doubt wrestles with hope every Bears game, and it is never too soon to overreact. Playoffs are allowed to seep into conversation. Even the words Super and Bowl need not arrive separately. The Bears, to borrow that wonderfully mangled description of FSU coach Bobby Bowden after losing to Notre Dame, “bumfuzzled” the Jaguars. More bumfuzzling is expected.
Bye weeks are iffy. Of those teams already byed — is that a word? — more have won than lost. Last season, the totals were 20 wins, 12 losses after byes.
Of the three or four losses that predictably come in a season, it is almost better to get one of them before the bye week. The theme then becomes how to get better rather than how to accept applause. No basking allowed.
The Bears have no significant injuries to heal, no real flaws to work on. Even a long snapper gets lost in the general mist of success.
The point is, the Bears need defining urgency, for now they suffer from actual, measurable competence. Swift is becoming an honest, dependable force at running back, three receivers — D.J. Moore, Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze, plus Kmet — must be accounted for, the secondary lurks in ambush and the intermittent pass rush is viable and here it comes again.
The Bears have not only met their potential but have intensified it. Possibilities have become expectations and suspicions are now convictions.
Can’t wait.