Would Bears have won Super Bowl 53 if Cody Parkey's kick went in?

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The latest episode of “Sports Uncovered” dives into an all-time what-if question over in the Bay Area: Would the Oakland Raiders have won Super Bowl XXXVII if Barrett Robbins played?

It’s a gripping and fascinating listen — what I’ve come to expect from the Sports Uncovered podcast series, by the way (the “I’m Back” episode about Michael Jordan’s return from his first retirement is outstanding, if you haven’t caught it already).

But I want to take this in a different direction, thinking about a recent “what if” in Bears history.

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What if Cody Parkey’s kick went in?

This, to me, is way more interesting than asking a different, yet still glaring, question: What if the Bears drafted Patrick Mahomes or Deshaun Watson instead of Mitch Trubisky?

That answer is easy. They would’ve at least made, if not won, Super Bowl LIII. Can you imagine *that* 2018 defense paired with one of the best four quarterbacks in the NFL?

Actually, don’t. It’s just going to enrage you.

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But the double-doink question isn’t as clear cut. It doesn’t change anything about the Bears’ previous 16 games, or the first 59 minutes and 50 seconds of that January’s Wild Card game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

All that changes is Parkey actually hitting the stinking kick. The Bears win, 18-16, earning them a trip to Los Angeles to face the Rams a week later.

I ran 25 simulations of a Bears-Rams Divisional Round game on What If Sports’ simulator and it produced 13 Rams wins and 12 Bears wins. That doesn’t factor in two important things: First, the Bears’ defensively dominant win over the Rams a month prior; and second, that the LA Coliseum would’ve been packed with Bears fans.

But I do think that Bears-Rams game would’ve been more of a toss-up than we here in Chicago might think. If Vic Fangio had Sean McVay’s number; so did Wade Phillips with Matt Nagy. Not having Trey Burton already hurt the Bears’ offense against the Eagles, and we saw how much Nagy’s scheme struggled with months to prepare for Burton’s potential absence in 2019.

Still, if this game were truly a toss-up…I’m going to go with the Bears on it. I'll back Fangio's scheme and the sheer talent on the Bears’ defense — which, by the way, might’ve got Eddie Jackson back — to be enough to eke past the Rams. Maybe by a score of 17-13 or something like that.

Had the Bears played the Rams, the New Orleans Saints would’ve hosted the Dallas Cowboys instead of the Eagles — and they’d still have won, probably more comfortably than they did otherwise (thanks, Alshon Jeffery).

This is where the Bears’ season probably would’ve ended.

Using What If Sports again, the Saints won 15 of 25 simulated matchups against the Bears at the Superdome — more notably, though, the Saints won those 15 games by an average of 17 points. The Bears won their 10 games by just 4 1/2 points.

The chances the Bears would’ve gone into the Superdome and won might’ve come down to good luck — just as was the case with the Rams, who made the Super Bowl on the back of arguably the worst officiating decision in NFL history. So it's not impossible.

But let’s say the Bears get another close win — 20-17, say — and move on to face the Patriots in the Super Bowl. The Bears did face the Patriots earlier in the 2018 season and scored 31 points, falling one yard short on a Kevin White Hail Mary from sending that game into overtime.

There would be two massive differences from that mid-October meeting and Super Bowl LIII, though. First: The Bears would, presumably, have a healthy Khalil Mack — not the version of Mack who frequently dropped into coverage on a bum ankle against New England in the regular season. Second: The Patriots would, certainly, have a better plan of defending Mitch Trubisky, who completed only 52 percent of his passes but threw for 333 yards and rushed for another 81 in that Week 7 game.

Interestingly, the Bears won 14 of 25 simulated matchups against the Patriots using the same What If Sports simulator. I would figure, though, Bill Belichick would do a better the second time around against a branch of the Andy Reid offense in the Super Bowl — the Bears didn’t have Nick Foles yet, after all.

But it’s hardly impossible to imagine the Bears beating the Rams and then sneaking past the Saints and Patriots to win their second Super Bowl in franchise history.

Unlikely? Yeah, probably.

But impossible?

Absolutely not. All that had to happen for us to find out was Parkey’s kick going through the uprights. Not off them.


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