Why not the Bears?

Share

If you really do want Lovie Smith to lose his job, then you really dont want the Bears to reach the playoffs. Because if they do, Smith might not be leaving anytime soon. (Even if they dont, that may be the case as well.)
 
The reason lies in the realm of the possible, because once a team is in the playoffs, the clich of anything is possible is indeed the case. In fact, the unusual arguably becomes the norm.
 
For critics who argue that the Bears do not remotely deserve to be in the postseason, consider:
 
Three of the last five Super Bowl champions were 10-6 or 9-7 in their regular seasons (2011 and 2007 New York Giants and 2010 Green Bay Packers) and had no business being in the playoffs.
 
How they came to that end is the real point. The Giants last year beat the 15-1 Packers in Green Bay and the 13-3 49ers in San Francisco to reach the Super Bowl.
 
The 2010 Packers defeated the 13-3 Falcons in Atlanta before coming through Chicago. The Bears reached the NFC Championship game by getting by the Seattle Seahawks, the 7-9 champion of the NFC West that had no business in the playoffs, as their win over defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans the round previous certainly showed, right?
 
And the other recent wild-card Super Bowl winner was the 2007 Giants, who beat the 13-3 Packers in Green Bay in the NFC Championship game, then finished off the trophy win by downing the New England Patriots, who had come into their Super Bowl 18-0.
 
A number of Bears during training camp voiced a team sentiment, Why not us? It is one that they rightly can still be invoking.
 
And the winner is
 
The Bears were going to come out of Game 16 in Detroit with the NFC North title in hand and being 11-5. The division crown and the record were lost in the 1-5 games stretch from Houston to Green Bay but the Bears simply need to get past one of the true whole-season flop stories in Detroit and they will have their 10-win season and the playoffs, with a little help from Green Bay.
 
Bears    20    Lions    16

Contact Us