After losing three-straight games, with two of those losses against the Oakland Raiders and Los Angeles Chargers, the confidence in the Bears among NFL experts has, well, disappeared.
Once considered a Super Bowl contender, the Bears are treading a rising tide of elimination. Their hope for a second-straight NFC North title is gone and the odds at a wild-card berth are slowly getting longer.
Matt Nagy is preaching the one-game-at-a-time motto, which is what most teams stuck in a downward spiral do around this time of year, but there's been little evidence from this team, on the field, that they'll be able to string together a series of wins needed to resuscitate their once-promising outlook.
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Sunday's game against the Philadelphia Eagles is the first in a nine-game series of one-game seasons. It's ironic that we've arrived here, too. Remember: Philadelphia ended Chicago's season in 2018; they have a chance to potentially do it again in Week 9.
According to media experts polled by NFL Pick Watch, the City of Brotherly Love will be anything but for Bears fans this week. Almost every expert -- 96 percent, to be exact -- picked the Eagles to win.
Yikes.
How can you blame them? The Bears' once-lauded defense has shown cracks of vulnerability during this three-game slide, while the offense, lowlighted by Mitch Trubisky, has proven they cannot be relied upon to lift the team when their defense isn't on its game.
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Sure, the Eagles' secondary should present more big-play opportunities for Trubisky and the passing game, but is there any reason to believe he'll take advantage of them? All we can say, with any degree of certainty right now, is that Trubisky and Nagy will once again frustrate fans through a head-scratching combination of play-calling and execution.
Hey, that's why they play the game, right? Maybe this is the week. Maybe, just maybe, this is when we see the Bears team that was supposed to be one of the final four NFC teams standing in January. Maybe this is when Trubisky shows the NFL universe why he was selected second overall in 2017 and why Nagy's been so patient with him. Maybe he leads Chicago to its first of many wins over the final nine games.
Or, maybe the Bears are who 96 percent of experts think they are: a team that can't get out of its own way destined for another gut-wrenching loss in Philly.
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