Why Bears could be dangerous in postseason, if they make it originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Are the Bears back? Believe it or not, Lance Briggs thinks the team could be a few tweaks away from making noise in the postseason— with a little help of course.
“They got to the point where they’re a little desperate, and they’re changing their identity offensively,” Briggs said on Football Aftershow on Sunday. “It’s working. At the end of the day, if the defense can get themselves where they need to be, and the Bears can get themselves in the playoffs, they could be one of the most dangerous teams.”
Currently sitting at No. 8 in the NFC, the Bears will need at least one Cardinals loss to slide into the final playoff slot. But with the 49ers and Rams left on the schedule, they won’t have any pushovers. At the time of publication, the Cardinals lead the Eagles in their Week 15 matchup.
The Bears on the other hand would have to win out if the Cardinals only drop one game. That may seem like a tall task with the 11-3 Green Bay Packers still on the schedule, but this Bears team looks much different from the team that lost to the Packers 41-25 in Week 12. Over their three-game win streak the Bears have averaged 33 points a game on offense. That’s not a typo. They’ve averaged 33 points a game, after scoring just over 18 points a game on offense the previous 11 games. If the defense regains its form, and the Packers have already locked up the No. 1 seed so they have nothing to play for, the Bears just come away with the two wins they need.
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Of course, the offense will need to continue their hot streak too. But Olin Kreutz thinks hitting rock bottom may have been exactly what the Bears offense needed to achieve the sustained success up to this point.
“I will always be convinced that coach Nagy needed to go through this,” Kreutz said on Football Aftershow. “He needed to go through getting desperate with this team. He wanted to run the Chiefs offense, he just didn’t have the weapons here. Eventually you have to run what you have. They’re the kind of guys where you have to run the ball, run the ball, run the ball, try to get a play-action pass out. They’re not going to just get the ball out to a Tyreek Hill or Travis Kelce and beat you 50, 60 yards down the field.
“This is the offense they finally had to get to. They’re here now.”
If the Bears do make it to the postseason, it will likely be because both the offense and defense started humming together. They’ll also be riding a five-game win streak, or have won four of their last five. They will have fallen to rock bottom and built themselves back up again. Most importantly, they will likely be feeling very confident. If that’s the case, look out.
