This Is The Best Part

We have to enjoy this now, guilt-free.

I am not here to try and dim the light of this Bears season in the least. It just might sound like it. Football seasons are so short that they're all fleeting, more so any section of one. It all moves to quickly, as teams go from building to contender to cooked in just a handful of years. You've seen it yourself. Which is why it's even more important to acknowledge that this is as good as it will be to be a Bears fan. At least in terms of fun.

The Bears being good, with literally no expectations either before they got here or to come for the rest of 2025, is when it's the most fun. There's no context, or there doesn't have to be. We don't have to take the 35,000 foot view of what this win means in the grand scheme, or what this development arc on the field this week means for '26 and '27. There's plenty of time for that, and it's not now. They win, we delight in it, and move to the next one.

The past few weeks, we could just all turn on the TV, and just watch the Bears win. It doesn't matter that fans from elsewhere or the national contingent or even most of the local media are in a rush to call them frauds (and that's come more from in the house than outside of it, if you read up what people are saying outside Chicago). Frauds for what? To be a fraud, one has to claim to be something they're not. What are we claiming the Bears are? No one's saying they're Super Bowl worthy. We're not out here staking our claim to being the new power arising above the forest. We're just giggling with every win, because it's fun!

Oh, Caleb Williams isn't playing at an All-Pro level so it's all moot? Fuck. Off. If you want to enjoy some other QB with the training wheels firmly attached and their coach is terrified to let them throw more than eight feet, go right ahead. That always spells long-term success. Seems to me a game manager, which is what apparently everyone is clamoring for, is a QB who doesn't turn the ball over and doesn't get in the way of his team winning. Which is exactly what Williams is doing. He's doing everything those with their brain dripping out their ears want, in the end, while also sprinkling in just enough big boy throws and plays to promise more. Sorry he wasn't Instant-Pot Josh Allen. Except Williams in 9-3.

No matter what happens the rest of this season, when the Bears reconvene in Lake Forest next July, there will be expectations. There will be demands. There will be more than just the result riding on every game. Everything will portend to something else. Does this win mean they're going to the Super Bowl? Does this loss mean Williams will never develop? That will be all 18 weeks in the 2026 season. There will be a threshold that if it isn't meant, will deem the season a failure. We'll never be able to just focus on what's right in front of us.

This season? The next month? Whatever threshold there was for 2025, and I'm not sure there ever was one, has been met and cleared by open lengths. We know now the Bears have one of the best coaches in the league. Maybe the best one they've ever had. Seriously, an argument could be made that the Bears now employ the best coach they ever have in the modern era. It just isn't a high bar to clear. We know now that Ditka was an idiot. Lovie Smith was limited, though probably didn't get as much credit as he did deserve. There's your list.

Oh I know, cynics and opposing fans will tell me we've been here before. It was 2018. First-year hotshot OC coach. Goofed some wins. Could be a little gimmick-y (or a lot gimmick-y). Won the division, flamed out, and that was that.

But c'mon. We all know there was way more urgency to that 2018 season. We knew that the defense probably would never get better than it was right then. It had actually been good the season before. We deluded ourselves the best we could, but we also knew that Trubisky couldn't be hidden forever. So it proved in January.

There's nothing like that this time. Is this the best the defense is going to be? Of course not. It could stand to get at least three new d-linemen, or at least way better at three or all four spots. We don't even know what it looks like with a fully healthy Johnson and Gordon, or if that's a thing that will ever happen. That doesn't even get into the ways the offense could improve in the immediate future.

Sure, it would be disappointing if the Bears went winless from here. Though with Cleveland still on the docket, and a possibly already dead Lions at home to wrap it all up, that doesn't seem all that likely. I'll be the same raving lunatic you will be if they lose both to Green Bay. It's just how that works.

But to even be here at all? It's all a gift. The fact that you spent part of today, even just a little, dreaming of what it might look like to get the Rams to come here in January instead of the other way around (and I know you did), it's candy. The fact that we're thinking about the Rams in the playoffs at all! It won't be candy again, it'll be the demand. And it won't be new again.

You don't need to look any farther than where Ben Johnson came from. One season of uncapped glee, and a playoff win. Catharsis. Then championship expectations unmet the next season. Malaise. And now stress and panic. Hear any Jared Goff chants now?

It can go quick, which is all the more reason to soak in it now. It's guiltless. It's contextless. It's breakfast for dinner. And it'll be gone soon. Put your face in and blow.