This time last year the Bears faced 100-1 odds to make the Super Bowl. Those went down to 40-1 after they acquired Khalil Mack at the start of the season.
Fast forward to this year, and the Bears are one of the favorites in the NFC. The day after the Super Bowl, one bookmaker listed Chicago at 14-1 behind only the Rams and Saints.
So how do the Bears handle expectations they didn’t have last season?
“All those expectations that we overachieved [last season] were external,” quarterback Mitchell Trubisky said in an appearance on PFT Live on Friday. “We knew what we had in the locker room. We knew how many games we could win. We felt like every week we were in it. We felt like we should’ve won more games than we did last year. The pressure, that’s from outside forces as well. We’re just going to control what we can control, go one game a week. Whether people believed in us, they think we should hit this number of wins or what, they didn’t last year. We know what we’re capable of. We know what we have in the locker room. We’re a very confident group. We’re excited for this year. The bar is definitely set higher. We know that. It’s not from who’s setting that expectation on the outside. We’re setting that standard for our self. We’re going to go chase it and get after it. We’re very pumped.”
Trubisky is coming off a Pro Bowl season when he went 11-3, threw 24 touchdowns, 12 interceptions and posted a 95.4 passer rating. For the first time in his three NFL seasons, the quarterback is not having to learn a new offense.
“It’s so nice. It’s amazing,” Trubisky said. “We’re already so much further than we were last year at this time. Having the same offense going through Year 2, it feels like you can really get on top of this offense, master it and just go through all the details so we know what we’re good at; we know what we want to work at. We’re just way more focused on what we want this offense to be, how we can improve, how we can be more explosive, convert more third downs, score more points and everything like that. It’s made this transition going into Year 3 so much easier, going into Year 2 of this offense. Just knowing everyone who we have playmaker-wise, knowing your teammates all across the board. We didn’t add a bunch of new guys outside of the rookies we just drafted. We just have a great chemistry between the players on offense and our coaches and what we’re trying to do scheme-wise. We’re just so much further from where we were at. So I’m just so excited about where this offense could be this year.”