Bears’ cold weather practices could help vs. Rams in frigid playoff game

Ben Johnson has changed the Chicago Bears’ culture in just one season, and it has the team three wins away from its first Super Bowl championship in 40 years. Johnson inherited a five-win team that just fired head coach Matt Eberflus in-season when he was hired a year ago, and even optimistic projections had Chicago as a roughly .500 team this year. Instead, the cardiac Bears have been winning at the buzzer all season, and it’s clear that Johnson has instilled a level of belief in this team that just wasn’t there with a similar roster under the last coaching staff.

Johnson has been building winning habits all season going back to an extremely physical training camp. One of those habits could pay off as the Bears host the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday night in Divisional Round of the 2026 NFL Playoffs. The weather reports call for the temperature at kickoff to be 14-degrees with flurries of snow. That could require a big adjustment for the warm-weather Rams, but the Bears should be ready. Players said on Wednesday that Johnson has been making them practice without heaters all season to prepare for cold weather games. Now they have one.

Last time the Bears and Rams played in the playoffs was in Jan. of 1986. In that game, Wilber Marshall put the Bears ahead for good by scooping a fumble and taking it to the house for a touchdown just as it started to snow at Soldier Field. It’s perhaps the most famous example of “Bear Weather” in franchise history, an idea that the team plays its best when it’s cold and snowy in Chicago. “Bear Weather” has been debunked over the years, but you can’t blame the team and its fanbase for cheering on the cold temperates this weekend.

The Bears will be ready for the cold. Will the Rams be? We’ll find out on Sunday.