Bears 1 game back for playoffs, but not asking ‘What if?'

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Believe it or not, after beating the Lions on Thanksgiving, the Bears find themselves only one game back of the NFC’s final playoff spot. No matter if the Washington Football Team wins or loses on Monday Night, the seventh seed will belong to a team with a 5-6 record, with the Bears sitting at 4-7. Matt Nagy admitted that’s something he took note of as games wrapped up on Sunday.

“When you look at the NFL in general, the parity of this league, it’s so crazy when you look at these games and how they go,” Nagy said. “To see that you’re one game out, with all of those teams that are in that mix for that last spot, I don’t care who you are, if you’re a competitor, you care about that.”

But Nagy is also realistic and realizes the Bears have big challenges ahead of them to make the playoffs. Despite being one game back, they’re currently 14th in the NFC, ahead of only the Seahawks (who play Monday) and Lions. Up next are dates with the 9-2 Cardinals and 9-3 Packers, as well.

 “The biggest thing for us was to make sure that we snapped that losing streak,” Nagy said. “When you snap that losing streak now, you come back in, you reset and now you have to start back to 1-0.

“This isn’t coach talk, but literally, we need to一 let’s win this game and then let’s get on a two-game winning streak. Let’s have a little streak here. If you go out and you play a great game and you beat a great team like the Cardinals, what that can do for your confidence and your belief. And then all of that other stuff handles itself, because there are a lot of teams in that mix, and there are a lot of things we can’t control. What we can control is winning on Sunday.”

Being so close, and yet so far, from a playoff berth can also lead to a game of “what if?” especially given the Bears’ narrow losses to the 49ers, Steelers and Ravens in quick succession. But Nagy said he and his team aren’t going down that path.

“That’s for every team in the league,” Nagy said. “All of these teams, you look at it, and you say, ‘man if we一 if, if, if.’ Well the ‘ifs’ don’t matter. We didn’t win those. We lost them. And so no matter how we lose them, no matter how we win, our record right now is 4-7, and the goal is to be 5-7.”

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