To the Bears' credit, their muted enthusiasm postgame suggested they understand what improving to 4-5 was – and what it wasn’t.
"It just feels good to win," said Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky, whose off-the-cuff comment about trying to get the TVs turned off at the team facility created a national overreaction last week. "When you go through tough things, you remember why you love to play this game."
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Yes, the Bears reminded everyone afterward that a win is a win is a win in the NFL, where parity reigns. The value of this victory depended on how one chose to view it.
Here’s the glass half-full outlook: The Bears stopped a four-game losing streak and finally saw enough steady, incremental progress from Trubisky to believe they can make a playoff run in the second half.
Here’s the glass half-empty take: A bad football team beat a worse one and the lowly Lions, playing with a backup quarterback and the league’s second-worst defense, snapped the ball at the Bears’ 25-yard line with seven seconds left still believing they had a chance to win a divisional game on the road.
Here’s the truth, which always lies somewhere in the middle: A desperate Bears team survived more than they dominated, overcoming all-too-familiar mistakes with a rare flourish from a frustrating offense. But nobody dared to complain after the first victory in 42 days.
It had been so long that the Bears probably needed to call a code inspector before they could reopen Club Dub – which, by the way, coach Matt Nagy never considered closing. Nor should he have.
"Never," Nagy said. "That’s who we are."
At kickoff, the Bears arrived among the NFL’s most disappointing teams at midseason for myriad reasons, starting with the quarterback. Those concerns mounted until the final series of the first half, when the underachieving offense finally scored a touchdown on the kind of play Chicago had been waiting too long to see. Trubisky placed the ball perfectly over safety Will Harris, and tight end Ben Braunecker came down with the 18-yard pass for his first NFL touchdown to give the Bears a 7-6 lead at halftime.
"It’s just one of those things that becomes contagious," Nagy said.
It was as if Trubisky exhaled. Playing freer in the third quarter, Trubisky looked like the quarterback who lit the Lions up a year earlier back when his arrow still was pointing up. The Bears still only amassed 226 total yards against a Lions defense giving up an average of 424.1, but Trubisky needed the small step forward this game represented. He completed a back-foot, 33-yard pass to No. 1 receiver Allen Robinson, the human Velcro pad he trusted to come down with the ball instead of Lions cornerback Darius Slay. Trubisky delivered a swing pass in stride to Tarik Cohen, who scooted in nine yards on an expertly executed pick play for the Bears' second score. His confidence creeping back, Trubisky followed up those two productive series with a precise 24-yard touchdown pass to Taylor Gabriel to make it 20-6 with 9:38 left in the third quarter.
Three series, three touchdowns. This was how the Bears were supposed to treat the Lions secondary. At last, this was Trubisky resembling an NFL starting quarterback again. He fared well when Nagy increased the tempo, as if the faster the offense gets to the line between plays, the slower the game becomes for him. Overall, Trubisky completed 16 of 23 passes for 173 yards and three touchdowns for a passer rating of 131.0 – numbers that should include an asterisk because they came against the NFL’s second-worst defensive unit. Yet they still count for a struggling quarterback searching for the slightest morsel of hope.
Especially after a first half that mostly confirmed the doubts that created enough noise for Trubisky to notice last week.
"This is hard for everybody to understand, but what I really appreciated about Mitch today is he never got rattled,’’ Nagy said.
"We needed a spark," Nagy said. "It sends a message to our players."
They got it loudly and clearly. Six plays after David Montgomery moved the chains with a two-yard gain, Trubisky connected with Braunecker to the relief of everyone in the city – and nobody looked more relieved than the quarterback.
"Winning always gives you confidence," a composed Trubisky said.
When the day began, nobody would have billed the game as a commercial for quarterback play in the NFL.
The Lions surprised the football world in announcing that quarterback Matthew Stafford was out with a neck injury, snapping his consecutive starts streak at 136. Without the NFL’s leading passer, the Lions turned to the unknown and unproven Jeff Driskel. In the Year of the Backup around the NFL – backups entered Week 10 with a 20-15 record in 2019 – this still felt like a gift to the Bears that unofficially kicked off the holiday season. The 49ers took Driskel in the sixth round of the 2016, and the Lions are the third team in four seasons for the Louisiana Tech product. Sunday marked Driskel’s sixth NFL start – his first five coming with the Bengals last year.
Learning he would start upon arriving at the stadium, Driskel did himself proud by completing 27 of 46 passes for 269 yards with a touchdown and an interception for a passer rating of 73.6. He had ups, such as the 48-yard touchdown pass to Kenny Golladay over Bears cornerback Kyle Fuller with 5:53 to make it 20-13. And he had downs, like throwing behind Golladay on fourth-and-11 with 2:18 left.
"We never flinched," Driskel said.
"Kwit’s been doing that all year long," Nagy said. "That’s what it’s all about."
For the Bears now, it’s all about putting Sunday in the proper perspective. It will mean nothing if they regress next Sunday in Los Angeles.
"For right, wrong or indifferent, there's a lot of teams in our situation at 3-5 that could have just folded up shop, and regardless of what would have happened tonight or today, our guys just practiced their tails off," Nagy said. "They came to meetings focused, energized. There was no lull in practice. And you appreciate that as a coach."
The road back to respectability has to start somewhere.