Brimstone doesn’t always come with the fire. Sometimes the fire stands alone. Burning with desire and intensity and intention. A divine destruction.
Let’s start here. My colleague Jason Lieser wrote earlier this week . . . the everything: “If things go as well as reasonably possible for the Bears, they could one-up last season and go 12-5 to take the NFC North for a second consecutive year. The road to that destination would start with a convincing win at the Panthers in the season opener Sunday.”
Not to overstate or make heavy his words, but the “start with a convincing win” that follows the “road to that destination,” if nothing else, provides the perfect framing for the importance of Game 1 of the official beginning of Phase 2 of this modern-era project called the Bears. And how the game Sunday — while only one game in theory looms much bigger in the overall picture of this season — is far more than just one game.
Because, see, the word “regression” seems to have attached itself to the Bears as the kickoff approaches. These TV types and microphone fiends, YouTube Channel in Mom’s Basement pundits, the ESPNs, Sports Illustrateds, Bleacher Reports of the world, these self-anointed football “experts” on Substack all seem to have come to the conclusion that this next episode for the Bears will be nothing like the last and the results far less celebratory.
The “NFL’s top regression team” is their overall prediction market. Opinioning and opining on how the Bears will be this year’s Commanders. That even without the Patrick Mahomes/Chiefs return-to-glory pressure or the absurd Rams undefeated-season expectations (in addition, no Jordan Love or C.J. Stroud or Jayden Daniels “save the entire franchise this season or else” attached to Caleb Williams’ arm and in-game decision-making), the Bears will still feel the burden (no Luther intended) of everything that proves regressing wrong every week they step on the field.
And this Week 1 for them will be the thesis for the other 16. A win against the Panthers speaks loud, a loss louder. This game goes back to their trade three years ago that changed the trajectory of both franchises. It resulted in both being atop their respective divisions last season and both getting beaten by a field goal by the same team last year in the playoffs (Panthers in the wild-card round, Bears in the divisional round) that this season the entire football world believed was unbeatable.
They share the common thread of being parts of the reason expectations on their growth this season are so iffy. They share the same predicted regressive gene. Built to exceed, set up to fall. The coach who wins this game can use it for the rest of the season as the barometer of what his team is capable of doing when the schedule puts an on-field, in-game mirror in front of them. The other coach has to “find a way” (remember that phrase) to convince his team — and fan base — that Game 1 was only one game; he has to believe his own lie.
Between offseason departures and injuries, the Bears unquestionably will be missing Kevin Byard III, Nahshon Wright, DJ Moore, Jaquan Brisker, Tremaine Edmunds, C.J. Gardner-Johnson, Drew Dalman (to surprise retirement), Ozzy Trapilo and Coby Bryant, along with the saga that is and has been Kyler Gordon. Making them a team that represents a team that has been torn and frayed at the fringes but with just enough of the core intact that it can still be sold off the rack at Balmain.
The declarations, if any, of the nexts. Dillon Thieneman, Zavion Thomas, preseason darling Jordan van den Berg. The foundational improvement, if any, of an offensive line that is as important to the Bears as the “Dark Side” is to the Seahawks in matching their last-season overachievement. The rebuild of an obsessive secondary, the insertion of a new center, the improvement, if any, of their awakening run game.
This is coach Ben Johnson’s largest flex moment to date. Or at least the one he will use. It all rests on not losing ground, not losing focus or course, not ever losing confidence. This game will be the wreck or reckoning of the brutal truth the Bears must deal with that could make, elevate or begin the decline of the rest of their season.
Because progress is the true disputant of regress. Success is its evil. And they both have to start somewhere.
In sports, they always tell you the rule of thumb along with the other four fingers is how one game doesn’t matter. Unless it’s the last one. That’s so Knute Rockne ago. Because as we all know and have recently watched one game be a team’s ascension or downfall, a beginning or an end. “You can’t play Game 1 like it’s Game 17,” they’ll tell you . . . except when Game 1 is the appraiser of Game 17 having any meaning. Adjudicates for you exactly who you are destined to be.
Everything the Bears seek is on the other side of Sodom and Gomorrah. We know what that life’s like here, we’ve already had, survived and rebuilt from our fire. Literally. Proverbially. Characteristically. Now it’s time to show the NFL what it looks like on the other side by a team that has walked through it.