O’Donnell: Manufacturing belief — how high is the winter zoom for the Bears?
THE PATH TO SPORTS PHENOMENON normally rises from interest to fandom to mania.
Sometimes teams take years. Sometimes an alpha or two can greatly accelerate the ascent.
At street level the signs and subtleties increase along the way.
IN ONE CORNER OF THE SUBURBS, a neighborhood newcomer moved in right after Halloween. Was it coincidence or prescience that his outdoor holiday lights — still up as the ides of January approach — have a dominant blue-and-orange hue?
Around the corner, a business executive and his den of fellow season-ticket holders have been caravaning to Bears home games for close to 20 years. They consolidate SUVs, sometimes to accommodate as many as eight, and during more successful Soldier Field times, up to 16.
Saturday, the troupe numbered 20. They also moved “wheels up” for advance on the South lot to 1:30 p.m., an additional 60 minutes from their typical travel-and-tailgating window of four-and-one-half hours.
“We want to milk every second to savor,” the wing leader said the afternoon prior. “Who knows if we'll ever pass this way again? I've already bet the Bears but I have a very bad feeling. I think they're going to lose. Green Bay is rested and prepped.”
FOR CLOSE TO THREE FULL QUARTERS Saturday night, the trip adviser's prophecy of doom was spot on. Matt LeFleur was a seasoned wizard and Ben Johnson — as Al Michaels told Prime Video's America plus local audiences in Chicago and Green Bay-Appleton — appeared to be in the throes of offensive “terminal cuteness.”
And then the silent battle gong sounded. Twenty-five fourth-quarter points. LeFleur, continuing to pass the football rather than drain the clock, coaching like a frozen north woodsman encrusted by call-card catatonia.
FOR THE TERMINALLY UNLUCKY who bet the Packers minus-1½ points, the final 10 minutes of the game were an exercise in streaming agony.
Caleb Williams was the Caleb Williams Chicago has come to feverishly embrace, “The Prince of the Comeback,” young John Elway with pregame ear buds pumping John Legend's calming “Ordinary People.”
Perhaps he'll never reach the Jordan-Ditka level. But who will?
WAS IT ONLY 22 MONTHS AGO that he and father Carl Williams were searching through every legal book and cranny to discover a way to avoid being drafted by the Bears?
That would be the same Carl Williams, exercising a father's privilege, who declared the NFL's Collective Bargaining Agreement — the owner's harness that could tether his son to the Bears for an underpaid 10 years — “unconstitutional.”
WILLIAMS THE FATHER HAS WISELY faded to proud as his son provides a beleaguered city and a massive sports show business association with physical skills and mental agility to take crescendos beyond merely theatrical.
“We had no right to win that game,” a hospital administrator back at her Barrington home base said Monday.
She wasn't wrong.
By the late-brigade standards of the 2025 Bears, key numbers failed to suggest victory:
· Williams threw two interceptions;
· Those two picks gave the Packers what normally would be a 2-0 winning edge in turnover margin;
· The Bears rushed for only 93 yards. Their magic threshold for victory during the current campaign has been 150.
NOW INTO THE MANIA FRAME ENTERS the Rams. Los Angeles is fearsome and experienced and thrives when ancient QB Matthew Stafford plays like he did during the organization's 2021 Super Bowl season.
Sunday, after Stafford and transcontinental crew got out of Carolina still alive, oddsmakers put the Rams up as 4½-point favorites.
That despite the fact four of their five losses have been on the road and three of those defeats were outdoors.
BY MONDAY AFTERNOON, close to 80% of first-wave money was on Chicago. The line was down to 3½. The lakefront temperature may also be dipping toward that number by halftime Sunday.
Despite the Bears’ growing list of infirmed, there is a feeling among some very sharp people that the Rams are the most vulnerable visitor to Soldier Field since the splintered Browns stumbled in five weeks and got toast-posted 31-3.
THE MOST INTRIGUING NUMBER OF ALL may be one that Caleb Williams texted to his father immediately after the 2024 NFL Combine, when Ryan Poles made it clear Chicago would take him with the No. 1 pick.
The number was “eight.”
Williams later explained that was his professional football goal — one more Super Bowl championship than Tom Brady.
BOLD, BRAZEN AND OOZING OF SELF-CONFIDENCE, especially for a 22-year-old headed for extended servitude to an NFL organization too frequently run like a family deli.
But oh so very much what a fan base dying to embrace a sports phenomenon wanted to hear.
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.