The Chicago Bears have watched yet another promising year go down the drain. A team that finished 12-4 in 2018 is now 7-8, out of the playoffs and staring down an uncertain future. This despite still boasting one of the best defenses in the NFL. How is it possible that an organization can be so consistent at something like this. It seems to happen every decade. They build a great defense, let it wreak havoc, but fail to take advantage of it because they have no clue how to build an offense.
This isn’t some random statement. A deeper dive into the team’s history reveals this is a fact. Since the switch to a 16-game schedule in 1978, the Bears have fielded a top 10 defense and a bottom 10 offense in the same year a total of six times. This includes three times in the past 14 years alone. If any stat can be called a true “Bears stat” it would be this one. An organization that knows only how to build half of a great team.
1979
- 3rd on defense
- 18th on offense
1988
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- 1st on defense
- 18th on offense
1993
- 3rd on defense
- 24th on offense
2005
- 1st on defense
- 26th on offense
2017
- 9th on defense
- 29th on offense
2019
- 6th on defense
- 30th on offense
Chicago Bears have strived to escape their past
What’s so disheartening about all this is it’s not like the Bears are doing this willingly. They’ve made genuine attempts in the past decade to fix this persistent issue. They traded for Jay Cutler in 2009. When that didn’t work they went and got him an offensive coach in Marc Trestman. No luck. So they started over with the supposedly forward-thinking Ryan Pace. He rebuilt the foundation and then made sure to get his quarterback in the draft with Mitch Trubisky. A year later he got the necessary offensive coach in Matt Nagy.
So it’s not like the franchise hasn’t tried to get better. It’s just that they suck at it. They still haven’t found somebody with the necessary vision to build a complete team. They haven’t had somebody like that in almost four decades and it’s been a long slog of painful memories during that time. It’s always fun watching the defense play good football on Sundays, but fans are starting to finally catch on to the cold reality.
Having great defenses doesn’t amount to as much as it used to. Without a quarterback and a viable offense, it’s nearly impossible to win consistently in this NFL. Hence why the Bears have three winning seasons this decade.
