Perhaps my biggest takeaway from this game and the season to this point is that we’ve gone back in time and are watching the 2004 Bears season. You remember the 2004 season, right? Perhaps you’ve blocked it from your memory since it was painful to get through. The Bears were starting a new chapter under Lovie Smith and featured a stagnant offense with pitiful passing performances, but a solid ground game. There were few, if any, notable playmakers at receiver and the offensive line struggled under a first-year offensive coordinator.
The defense, however, showed promise with plenty of young players. They just couldn’t put it all together to stack wins on top of each other. The result was a 5-11 season that had fans questioning where this team was going. Sound familiar? The good news, however, was that it was a stepping stone for the next few seasons. Players continued to develop and the front office pinpointed areas of concern in the offseason and the Bears built a team that went to the postseason in consecutive years. That’s where this team can go heading into 2023 with the right attention to detail.
Poles wanted to see what this offense looked like without spending gobs of money first. He wanted to see where the major deficiencies were and those have been made crystal clear. There’s not much he can do about it now, though. It’s a team with a struggling offense with little star power and a defense that could become a very productive unit, just like in 2004. The only difference is this year, the Bears have a healthy quarterback they can build with an not a cavalcade of characters such as Jonathan Quinn, Craig Krenzel, and Chad Hutchinson. That alone provides hope of developing the offense into next year. But for now, this is what we have to look forward to for the rest of the season.
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