Playoffs will be unfamiliar territory for most Bears players

Montez Sweat and the Bears found themselves in an unfamiliar situation Tuesday morning.

Players and coaches gathered at Halas Hall days after the Bears ended the regular season with a loss to the Detroit Lions. But the Bears didn’t spend the day packing up their lockers and doing their last interviews with reporters before the offseason started.

Instead, the Bears started preparing for Saturday’s Wild Card matchup against the Green Bay Packers, their first playoff game since 2020.

“It’s everything,” Sweat, a defensive end, said. “You’re usually packing the cars up, sending everything back home to home base and getting ready for the offseason. So it feels good preparing for the postseason right now.”

To many outside the building, the Bears’ 11-6 record, NFC North championship and No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs all seem ahead of schedule.

Many expected the Bears to take a big step in head coach Ben Johnson’s first season at the helm. The Bears had talent on their 5-12 team in 2024 and found ways to lose too many games in dramatic ways. But few thought Chicago could earn a top seed and secure potential home playoff games.

Tuesday playoff preparation wasn’t a surprise to many of the Bears for as much as it was unfamiliar. Johnson made it clear when he took over that he believed the organization was a sleeping giant that could contend for championships each season.

Now that Johnson’s vision came true, he set new expectations as the Bears entered unfamiliar territory.

“We’re mentally prepared to play for five more weeks,” Johnson said. “And so that’s our intent. How do you do that? You go out and you win the first one. So we’re going to come in today and we’re going to have a great day today. Meetings. Walk-through. Short week. Opponent that we know. And we’re going to get ready for this one and we’re going to go all out for this game.”

The Bears have a younger group, primarily offensively, without much playoff experience. Three players — tight end Cole Kmet, cornerback Jaylon Johnson and kicker Cairo Santos — remain from the last Bears team that reached the playoffs in 2020. Meanwhile, Bears general manager Ryan Poles added veterans like left guard Joe Thuney who’s won multiple Super Bowls.

Veteran safety Kevin Byard compared this year’s Bears team to the 2019 Tennessee Titans group he was part of early in his career. The Titans had a young squad that sneaked into the playoffs with a 9-7 record. Tennessee reached the AFC Championship game and lost to the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.

The Bears have treated the last month’s games with a high level of intensity as they tried to qualify for the playoffs. Three of their final four opponents either qualified for the playoffs or finished the year above .500.

Chicago went 1-3 in those games. The team came back to beat the Packers in overtime in Week 16 and lost close games to the Packers, San Francisco 49ers and Lions, gaining valuable experience along the way.

“Just a lot of experience in a lot of different situations that we can learn from,” Kmet said. “Some of them we’ve executed well. Some of them we haven’t. Those are all things we can take in, learn from and bring into the playoffs. We don’t have a lot of experience in that regard. And I think that will bode well for us here, especially in this first game.”

Johnson set the goal of ending the season on a four-game winning streak, ending with a Super Bowl title.

Those are the expectations, no matter how unfamiliar it might be.

“That’s what our mission is,” Kmet said. “So we have to take care of this first one here in order to be on our path there. But yeah, this season has been a lot of fun. It has been a great locker room to be a part of. I’ve had a lot of fun with the guys in there. We just want to keep moving on and the only way to do that is to win on Saturday.”