Bear Digest

Bears Tempering Excitement with a Need to Prove Themselves

The Bears are fed up with losing and coach Matt Eberflus sees real signs of success but they are a team very limited in experience when it comes to winning.

Gene Chamberlain

DJ Moore hasn't been in a playoff game, and is like the majority of Bears players in this regard.
DJ Moore hasn't been in a playoff game, and is like the majority of Bears players in this regard. / jamie sabau-usa today sports
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There have been signs the Bears see indicating they'll be more competitive to start this season than in the past two openers under coach Matt Eberflus.

A 4-0 preseason is one, although exhibition games against substitutes are hardly proof.

Like any coach, Eberflus wants to take a cautious approach to all of the unbridled optimism.

"Yeah, I mean there's excitement, but we're focused on this opponent—the opponent that's in front of us," Eberflus said. "That's all we can do, right? So let's get to Sunday and compete in that game and move on."

Even Eberflus can't deny the third year in their rebuilding project has advanced the optimism needle. It's not 2022 when the roster was gutted, that's for sure.

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"Yeah, I mean this is a team game, right?" Eberflus said. "So you say all that, but I would say that we knew what it was gonna be, how difficult it was gonna be. We laid out the plan in terms of what it was gonna take and laying the foundation of our standards and how we operate as a football team. And how to bring those guys together. That's important part and we've always been together, even though the wins weren't stacked up early on, we've always played together.

"We've always played the right way. Add talent, Year 3, we should see a good product on the field now."

Facing a rebuilt Titans team with a roster full of additions playing together for the first time seems a good place for the Bears to start, but it is a team with more offensive weapons than in the past. It's the Tennessee defense in need of a talent infusion suited to its new 3-4 scheme.

There is always the unscouted element to facing a team with a new coaching staff, particularly in the first game.

When the Bears play a team with a first-year coach under Eberflus, they are 2-5. This might not sound good but considering they are 10-24 in his first two years it's not necessarily terrible. And one of the losses came against Denver and Sean Payton, whose past in the league in New Orleans made him an open book more than a mystery. Another loss was actually the second game played against Kevin O'Connell's Vikings in his first year.

They also had a win over a coach in his first season with the team but one well known to Eberflus because they worked together—former Panthers coach Frank Reich.

Other than the 4-0 preseason record, which means little, Eberflus has his own way to judge whether this team will be improved heading into what looks like a matchup with plenty of uncertainty.

"I would say the competition that we've had up to this point, during training camp—you can feel that," Eberflus said. "That's real, going against each other, our players, offensive players going against defensive players. That competition is real and the guys did a real good job of competing and really sharpening each other during that time.

"Like I said, we’re excited about this competition coming up."

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"I think every year I wanted to be on a winning team and then something, just, you go on a lull and that just takes over and then you finish as strong as you can," Moore said. "The record is what the record is at the end of the year and I've happened to be on the losing side ... for six years."

The current active 53-man Bears roster has 20 players who have been in playoff games, but only one with a Super Bowl ring and that's center Coleman Shelton with the Rams.

"I don't know, we gotta get through Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, four, five, six, seven. At the end of the year, we'll know if that anticipation was correct or wrong," Moore said. "What the record is at the end of the year is what it is.

"Hopefully, it's on the winning side and we're in the postseason and we can have this conversation smiling."


Postseason Bears Experience

  • LB Amen Ogbongbemiga, 1 playoff game for Chargers 2022
  • DE Darrell Taylor, 1 playoff game for Seattle 2022
  • TE Cole Kmet, 1 playoff game for Bears 2020
  • RB D'Andre Swift, 1 playoff game for Eagles, 34 yards vs. Tampa Bay 2023
  • OL Ryan Bates, 9 playoff games for Buffalo, four starts
  • FB Khari Blasingame, 5 playoff games for Tennessee
  • G Nate Davis, 5 playoff games for Tennessee
  • LB T.J. Edwards, 5 playoff games for Philadelphia, Super Bowl loss 2022
  • RB Travis Homer, 2 playoff games for Seahawks, 2020
  • S Jonathan Owens, 2 playoff starts for Packers in 2023
  • C Coleman Shelton, 7 playoff games for Rams with one start in 2023, Super Bowl ring 2021
  • DE Montez Sweat, 1 sack in 2021 playoff loss for Washington
  • WR DeAndre Carter, 5 playoff games including one with the Bears at New Orleans with three catches
  • LB Tremaine Edmunds, 8 playoff games for Buffalo
  • G/T Matt Pryor 1 playoff start for Seattle 2019
  • TE Gerald Everett, 7 playoff games including Super Bowl loss in 2018 for Rams
  • S Kevin Byard, 7 playoff games for Tennessee
  • K Cairo Santos, 4 playoff games, 3 for Kansas City, 1 for Bears in 2020
  • Keenan Allen, 3 playoff games for Chargers in 2018, 2022
  • Marcedes Lewis, 10 playoff games, 5 each for Packers and Jaguars, 16 postseason catches

Twitter: BearsOnSI

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.