6 steps for talking yourself into liking the Chicago Bears this season

For most of my life, I cared about the Chicago Bears more than I cared about pretty much anything else. This is the type of admission that is so humiliating, so thoroughly shameful, that you know it has to be true. Still, I have some evidence:

Recently, I haven’t cared about the Bears at all.

The game is too violent, the commissioner is a dolt, and the conversation around the sport’s wave of legitimate protest has been a nauseating game of cognitive dissonance. I was willing to deal with it when I could write love letters to Devin Hester and defend the proud honor of American hero Jay Cutler. But I could not deal with it while watching my favorite team get run into the ground by John Fox.

John Fox is Jeff Fisher without the publicity. The Bears hired him to bring an air of ‘football guy’ professionalism after the disaster that was the Marc Trestman era, but somehow the team only got more pitiful and less interesting. Fox won 14 games in three years and his teams will mostly be remembered for the game they punted on every possession, consistently leading the league in players on IR, and the time he challenged his way into a turnover.

The Bears under John Fox drained every bit of enthusiasm I had to offer, and I say this as someone who still writes about the Bulls every day. But now John Fox is gone. All of the sudden, the Bears are starting to look ... respectable? Easy to like? Maybe even kind of fun?

It is with a heavy heart I tell you I’m back in on the Chicago Bears. You can be, too. These are the six steps to talking yourself into the 2018 Bears.

We could post cool stats like this:

We can point to quotes to like:

“Unless something happens that prevents him from having longevity, you are talking about a Hall of Fame player at, I would argue other than quarterback, the most important position on the field,” said Joe Banner, the former president of the Eagles for 18 seasons during Andy Reid’s successful run and CEO of the Browns for two.

“He elevates everybody around him. He’s a tremendous character person. He’s intelligent. He has great leadership skills. This is unheard of. … Maybe you go back to Reggie White to think of a player that had this big of an impact on the game without any question marks about him — injury history, intelligence, work ethic, respect, leadership. You pick the word and there isn’t one thing you can’t put an A-plus next to.”

Or you can just watch Khalil Mack lift an offensive tackle into the sky with one hand, drive him to the ground run through him like there’s nothing there but oxygen:

That is speed-to-power at its best and it’s still one of the most thrilling things to watch in football.

If quarterback is the most important position in sports, the second most important position in football is the guy paid to break him in half. No one is better at it than Khalil Mack, and it is still a certifiable shock he is a Bear. He’s a perfect fit for Vic Fangio’s 3-4 and he’s going to make every single player on this team better. The secondary won’t have to cover as long, the other pass rushers will face fewer double-teams and the offense will gain the benefit of field position.

The Bears had a young defense with upside before they got Mack. Now they have a chance to be special.

Want to double team Mack? Great, Leonard Floyd and Akiem Hicks are happy to vaporize your quarterback in his absence.

Hicks is awesome. He had 8.5 sacks last year. He’s been touted as the NFL’s best 3-4 defensive end. He tweets deep thoughts. And best of all, he’s already talking shit to the Packers:

“I know those five guys can’t block Khalil Mack,” Hicks, who was sitting by Mack during the call, said, via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “You know, I really feel like this: They have to put their offensive line together however they do it and put their best product out on the field, but I don’t think their best product can block Khalil Mack.”

Then there’s Floyd, who almost looks more like a basketball player than a football player with a lean 6’6 frame. The Bears traded up to draft Floyd in the first round two years because of his potential. Now he’s ready to turn that into production.

Floyd is a speed rusher in the purest sense, using his 4.6 40-yard-dash time to dust opposing tackles and get his long arms around the QB. People in the organization were already talking about a 12-sack season for Floyd this year before the Mack move.

If he can finally stay healthy. pairing Mack and Floyd on opposite edges and freeing Hicks to come up the middle has all the makings of an excellent pass rush.

It is absolutely fair and right to be skeptical of Mitch Trubisky. He sat for three years at North Carolina and only played 12 college games. He did nothing under John Fox’s incredibly limited playbook as a rookie to inspire confidence. He is, most importantly, a Chicago Bears quarterback, and every Chicago Bears quarterback has been terrible since Sid Luckman was strapping on his leather helmet in 1942.

Anytime you take a QB at No. 2 overall whose best comp is Alex Smith, it’s hard to get too excited. But even if Trubisky doesn’t have a sky-high ceiling, it’s still possible he can be a dependable and competent quarterback. His receivers are a million times better than last year, with free agents Allen Robinson and Trey Burton leading the revamped passing game. The offensive playcalling will be five million times better than last year. He still has Jordan Howard when he needs him. And an improved defense should mean better starting field position.

If Trubisky can actually become “dependable and competent,” he will be one of the best QBs in Bears history. That’s how low the bar is. For this year, he’s basically in the 2005 Kyle Orton position: just get the ball to your playmakers and don’t screw anything up too bad.

I offer two pieces of evidence for this. First, this insane backflip catch:

Second, this shit:

Even prime Devin Hester thinks that’s a sick return. Everything about Tarik Cohen is great. He wants to retire early to do philanthropy work. He uses NBA comps. He talks to my colleague Whitney about Fortnight. I love him and you should, too.

He might even be good!

I’ll admit: I was buying what Trestman was selling back in the day. He was purported offensive genius for a franchise defined by offensive ineptitude. He aimed to build his players up, not tear them down. And hey, he did make Josh McCown a ton of money.

The problem with Trestman is that he was a weirdo, and football players don’t like weirdos.

Nagy comes with a lot of the same selling points, only he’s proven himself in the NFL, not the CFL. Kansas City’s receivers were running wide open all year. The Bears’ receivers were running wide open all preseason, most notably when their second stringers whooped KC’s first string defense.

Vic Fangio can handle the defense. There’s finally have some playmakers in the passing game. Nagy’s West Coast style of attack seems to fit Trubisky’s strengths perfectly. There’s a chance — a real chance! — the Bears’ offense could eventually be worthwhile for once in its existence.

Many of these Bears aren’t proven just yet, but have the talent and opportunity to make a name for themselves this year. There’s the rising young safety tandem of Adrian Amos and Eddie Jackson. There’s rookie WR Anthony Miller and 26-year-old tight end Burton in the passing game. There’s a Eddie Goldman up front, who some already believe is a top 10 defensive tackle. And that’s before mentioning Roquan Smith, the rookie insider linebacker everyone loved in the draft.

The Bears don’t have high expectations entering this season. They play in what might be the toughest division in football. Trubisky and Nagy are both totally unproven. Mack and Smith just got here. Just making the playoffs after being a five-win team a year ago would be the pie-in-the-sky best case scenario.

But after some long, draining years, the Bears are finally interesting enough to watch again. For a football fan who spent the last three years in exile, that’s good enough for me.