Can you remember the vibe? The renewed hope? That hunch the Bears were turning a corner?
On Thanksgiving weekend 2015 — after the Bears upset the Packers 17-13 at Lambeau Field, after Jay Cutler and Tracy Porter shared a fake postgame turkey leg with Michelle Tafoya, after players turned the visitors locker room in Green Bay into a raucous celebration — Chicago was abuzz with optimism.
It wasn’t just a rare victory against Aaron Rodgers, who at that point had won 13 of 16 starts against the Bears. It wasn’t just that the Bears spoiled Brett Favre’s jersey retirement ceremony. It was a bit of a surge: five wins in eight games.
After an 0-3 September, the Bears were back in the playoff conversation, a game below .500 and following the lead of accomplished coach John Fox, still a symbol of hope in his first season with the Bears. The defense was improving. Cutler was making fewer mistakes.
There seemed to be something significant in that win over the Packers, a “Football Night in America” statement on Thanksgiving night that will be replayed at 8:30 p.m. Thursday on NBCSN. It’s part of the network’s weeklong time machine, transporting us back to 14 “Football Night in America” games from 2006 through 2018. But it’s the only peek at the Bears.
Here are a few excerpts from the Tribune’s coverage on a misty holiday night.
From David Haugh: The Bears responded with their loudest statement in years in the NFL’s oldest rivalry, a 17-13 victory that suddenly made them the most optimistic five-win team in the league. Just a little more than a year ago, the Bears skulked back from Wisconsin after a 55-14 blowout that convinced ownership something drastic needed to be done. They returned home in the wee hours of Friday morning envisioning NFC wild-card scenarios. “Huge win,” cornerback Tracy Porter declared. “We’re in the playoff hunt.” That’s what happens when you beat the Packers at Lambeau, when Jay Cutler outplays Aaron Rodgers, when the defense shows as much improvement as any in the NFL.
From Brad Biggs: Cutler put together a statement game. It wasn’t particularly pretty and the numbers — 19 of 31 for 200 yards — aren’t going to be what you remember. A victory over the Packers when they look to be vulnerable this season will be remembered and maybe serve as a launching point for this Bears team.
From yours truly: Indeed, the Bears were in a mood to joke and celebrate Thursday night, no matter how drained, drenched and dirty they felt. On a short week, on a sloppy night, against a division rival, in a supercharged road environment, they had passed a major test. When clutch plays were needed, the Bears delivered. … (They) now must sharpen their concentration to successfully embrace their biggest victory of the season. A run at a playoff berth suddenly doesn’t seem outlandish. Not for a team that handled its Thanksgiving moment with such aplomb.
With a favorable schedule ahead, the Bears were eyeing a breakthrough.
As we all know, that victory turned out to be fool’s gold. Instead of using it as a springboard, the Bears stepped on a banana peel and slipped through December in cartoonish fashion, losing four of their final five games to finish in last place in the NFC North at 6-10.
Under Fox they never got on a roll again. After that Thanksgiving night win, they went 9-28 until his firing, including a woeful 2-12 mark in division games.
That vibe? That renewed hope after winning what Fox called “a red-letter game”? That hunch the Bears were turning a corner? Yeah. Uh, well … not so much.
It makes you wonder why the programming decision makers at NBCSN selected that game. Perhaps it was as an ode to Favre.
If they truly wanted to attract eyeballs in the Chicago market, they would have been better off selecting the 2018 Bears’ impressive 15-6 win over the eventual NFC champion Rams. That game was a showcase of how dominant the Bears defense was. Or they could have dusted off the game three weeks earlier at Soldier Field in which the defense sparked a 25-20 win over the Vikings.
Or what about a 2013 Sunday night gem: a 40-23 road blowout of the Steelers that featured a 42-yard fumble-return touchdown by Julius Peppers, a ridiculous 17-yard touchdown pass from Cutler to Earl Bennett and a shoulder-lowering Cutler run for a first down?
Granted, the Bears record on “Football Night in America” since NBC took that over as the league’s spotlight game isn’t all that impressive. Since the start of 2006, they are 11-15 on Sunday nights during the regular season. That doesn’t include last year’s season-opening 10-3 loss to the Packers in the network’s Thursday night 100th-season kickoff game or a playoff loss to the Eagles in January 2019. It also doesn’t include the Thanksgiving upset of the Packers that will replay Thursday.
This Bears-Packers game might have difficulty competing for eyeballs with some of the other dusted-off sports programming that will air simultaneously. That includes the classic Texas-USC national championship game at the Rose Bowl in January 2006 (ESPN); Game 7 of the Spurs-Pistons NBA Finals in 2005 (NBA TV); the Vikings stunning the Saints in “The Minneapolis Miracle” in January 2018 (FS1); Seahawks over Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII (NFL Network); Kentucky over Stanford in the 1998 Final Four (CBS Sports Network); Tuffy Rhodes’ three-homer opening day for the Cubs in 1993 (Marquee); the Blackhawks downing the Sharks in Game 1 of the 2010 Western Conference finals (NBC Sports Chicago); LeBron James as a high school senior at the 2003 Powerade Jam Fest (ESPN2); and, yes, the first round of the 2019 Valero Texas Open (Golf Channel). (Who could forget Si Woo Kim’s opening 66?)
Still, for those needing to get their football fix, wanting to dabble in nostalgia of any kind or merely wanting to torture themselves with a reminder of a win that felt so good but meant so little, clear your schedule or set the DVR for Thursday night.
