Hub Arkush: Sunday's game is Bears' biggest in a decade
While the rest of us celebrated the new year Thursday evening, if you are a Chicago Bear there are two days to go until you can say goodbye to 2020, something we've all been longing to do for months.
For the Bears, though, Sunday's meeting with the Green Bay Packers at Soldier Field will dictate what kind of a year it's been for them more than anything else that's happened over the last 12 months.
It is arguably the franchise's biggest game in a decade, when they met the Packers in the 2010 NFC title game.
With a win Sunday, the Bears will be a legitimate playoff team with momentum. If they knock off the NFC's best, they will also have the knowledge they can play with anyone over the weeks that follow.
And the massive weight of the Packers off their backs, at least for now.
Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy, whose jobs some believed were in jeopardy just four weeks ago, will almost certainly be back, perhaps even with contract extensions, and Mitch Trubisky will definitely be in demand somewhere, quite possibly even Chicago.
With a loss, they will either be done for the season or could back into a postseason they didn't earn. They will be a franchise stuck in the mud and going nowhere.
While I suspect, short of an embarrassment like they had in Green Bay five weeks ago, Pace and Nagy will both still be back, Bears fans will be outraged and it will be a long, horribly unpleasant offseason for all.
Defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano thinks his guys get it.
“You could tell, you know, just walking in the building on Wednesday, the first chance we got to be with them after the last game. Different look, different look in their eye, the sense of urgency, the focus,” Pagano said. “I think everybody is ... understands the opportunity in front of us and that these opportunities don't come around very often. Let alone it's the Bears vs. the Packers and the history behind that game and all that stuff that comes with us.”
Allen Robinson has played in a game of this magnitude once: the 2018 “Double Doink” wild-card loss to the Eagles, a game in which the Bears started poorly and didn't come around until well into the third quarter.
Robinson was asked how the Bears should approach a game of this magnitude.
“Some guys run on very high octane and some guys are very even-keeled,” he said. “So whatever gets you going this week, whatever is going to help put us in the best position going forward, whatever that may be, bring it. That's one of those things for this week, this is our last guaranteed one. The chips are all in. We don't want to leave any stones unturned.”
Pro Bowl safety Eddie Jackson has had a particularly interesting season. Last spring he became one of the highest paid safeties in the game and since has had his least productive season as a pro.
He knows how sweet redemption here could be.
“So it's like OK, you know with them scoring 40 points on us and the type of game we played where people said we gave up and now the tables have turned,” Jackson said. “We are facing them with everything to lose for the last game of the regular season to get into the playoffs, so it's no better feeling, nothing aligns greater.
“This type of rivalry that's ahead of us, like I said we are ready, it's enough talking. There's no more of that.”
One game should never have the level of impact this one will in evaluating and determining where a franchise is at and what it's future should be. But the Bears made this bed themselves with their six-game losing streak and now it's time to pay the piper.
That they will play Green Bay for the 200th time in the regular season is just gravy.
It is more than a tad ironic that so many refuse to credit the Bears' 5-1 start or their current three-game win streak to any more than weak opponents and good luck, but so few focus on the facts that five of their seven losses were by one score and to five of the league's best teams.
It is the lot of these Chicago Bears.
By about 6:30 Sunday night almost all questions should be answered.
• Twitter: @Hub_Arkush