So now what?
The Bears aren’t going to the playoffs. Maybe they’re a 9-7 team, or an 8-8 team. Honestly though, it doesn’t really matter. Seasons are binary if you consider yourself a Super Bowl contender. Winning the division -- last year’s peak -- was supposed to be the base for this year’s playoff run, and yet here they are: a third place team playing the final two games for pride.
It’s certainly a different, somewhat-underwhelming (playing spoiler never seems quite as fun as its reputation suggests) mood, but the Bears aren’t short on motivation over these final two weeks.
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Next week is the classic Student-Mentor Game, with Andy Reid and the Chiefs in town. After that, a trip to Minnesota with Nagy’s 3-0 record against the Vikings on the line, and wanting to finish the season strong, etc.
“For us, nothing really changes,” Matt Nagy said on Monday afternoon. “We want to figure out the whys, which we're doing all this morning — why things went the way they went yesterday, how we can get better in certain areas, offense, defensive and special teams.
"And do everything we can to win the football game, and that's by Xs and Os, that's by players. I really don't think anything changes except we want to win. We want to win.”
There are plenty of positional questions to be answered over the next two weeks as well.
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For all that Danny Trevathan brings on and off the field, there’s now a sufficiently awkward, Nick Kwiatkoski-sized elephant in the linebacker room -- and on the payroll.
It’s not unlikely that Adam Shaheen’s time in Lake Forest is over, nor are the Bears tied particularly tightly to any of the undrafted tight ends they’ve found mixed success with since he and Trey Burton went on IR.
They’ll need to decide if they want to pay Mitch Trubisky over $20 million in 2021, and hey, Chase Daniel’s contract is up too.
The core of the Bears will still be around in 2020, but Ryan Pace has more work to do now than he did at this point in 2018.
“This is the first time that we’re in this situation in the year and a half or two years that I’m here,” Nagy added. “I know how our guys will respond. I know how our coaches will respond, so our main objective now is to treat this game no different than literally what it would’ve been if we’d won yesterday.”
“What we can do is continue to fight our tails off and coach our tails off, and that’s what we’re looking for and that’s what I’m looking for: how our guys respond to this situation.”
The plan right now is for the Bears to continue playing their starters, according to Nagy. He did concede that it wasn't a final plan, and given the Bears’ history of practicing extreme precaution with injuries during Nagy’s tenure, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where guys who are suffering with something like, say, indescribable elbow pain, may end up shutting it down. Professional athletes are creatures of habit, however, and when it’s already Week 16, what’s the point in mixing up the routine if you don't have to?
“I just know this is how we're wired,” Nagy said. “We want to do everything ... everything stays the same. I realize that because of can't make the playoffs thing, I get that from the outsiders.
"But for us, nothing really changes.”
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