Bears About to Show Where They Stand

Analysis: Any progress made in a rebuild to date by the Bears is about to become obvious to all against San Francisco in the opener.

It all comes to a head on Sunday at Soldier Field: The HITS principle, Justin Fields' development in a new offense and the predictions for a nightmare season.

The curtain goes up on Ryan Poles' attempt to rebuild the Bears by first fixing the fouled up salary cap, a process many perceive as a poor attempt to support his quarterback.

The Bears see something different at work, of course. 

Certainly they're not trumpeting how they'll suddenly be a force capable of challenging the Packers in the NFC North.

Instead, coach Matt Eberflus hedged his bets well by calling this only a beginning.

"We feel that we're in a good spot," Eberflus said. "We've built a lot of good things over the course of these seven months. We're in a good place for where we're building this.

"Our foundation is starting to settle in. Of course that's going to take a while. You don't just build a foundation and start building on top of it right away. We're still building a foundation and we're going to put it on display on Sunday."

It was a properly worded way to describe Game 1, as the Bears try to take a newly constructed team against a San Francisco 49ers team that has been in the NFC championship game two of the last three years.

The 49ers are old hands at this sort of thing. They opened their last season against a completely new regime in Detroit and led 38-10 before the Lions got a couple of meaningless touchdowns in the last two minutes in a 41-33 San Francisco win.

The difference this time is San Francisco brings a quarterback to Chicago with even less experience than Fields. Any Bears chance for upsetting a seven-point favorite will depend greatly on forcing mistakes from Trey Lance.

They'll need some of the takeaways Eberflus has spoken so much about in relation to his defense.

"Honestly, I think all 11 are going to surprise everyone with how we are going to run to the ball and how we are going to hit anything that moves," linebacker Roquan Smith said.

Conversely, they need few misakes from Fields in his 11th career start. Facing a defense ranked top five in each of the last three years won't make for a simple rolling out of the Luke Getsy offense.

"I just think he's ready to go," Eberflus said. "I think the coaches have done a great job of preparing him to be ready and he's excited. There's different levels that you get into the game.

"We use that word a lot—excited means that you're ready, you're focused, you're prepared and you're ready to do it. That's where I think he is and that's where I know he is. He's done that on the practice field and we're all excited to watch our whole football team go out there."

As he said, however, it's only the start. They're unveiling the foundation.

They have only 19 players of their 53 who played for the Ryan Pace-Matt Nagy regime. They have seven who weren't even here for this preseason.

They're starting a rookie left tackle for the first time in 30 years, two more rookies in their secondary and have 15 rookies overall.

If it's a foundation, it's one they've just poured and there have to be real questions about how long it really needs before it has set.

Facing a league power with players like Nick Bosa, Deebo Samuel and Fred Warner is one of the worst ways to find out if it's ready.

Final Score Prediction: 49ers 23, Bears 10

Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven