For a moment on February 5, 2017, it looked as if Super Bowl LI was going to end up being the highlight of Grady Jarrett’s football career. In just his second NFL season, Jarrett was having what should’ve gone down as iconic performance in the biggest game of his life. However, Jarrett’s Super Bowl record-tying 3 sacks are now just a footnote in a game that’s commonly known by a simple title that haunts all former members of the Atlanta Falcons… 28-3.
Over eight years have passed since the New England Patriots overcame that 25-point deficit and won Super Bowl LI by a final score of 34-28. Jarrett, now a member of the Chicago Bears, should’ve been able to leave that game in the past, but earlier this month, new Bears head coach Ben Johnson reminded his veteran defensive tackle of this collapse in front of the entire team.
While running through a list of recent Super Bowl champions, Ben Johnson highlighted the New England Patriots’ win in Super Bowl LI. Per Patrick Finley of the Chicago Sun-Times, Johnson asked his team a simple question: “How do you win when you find yourself in a hole, which we will at some point this year? Every good team does every year. … You find your back against the wall. How do you respond to that in the right manner? New England did.”
As all of this was ongoing, Jarrett had to watch in silence and relive his own personal nightmare. He had to listen as Joe Thuney, now a Bear but back then a Patriot, explain his former team’s mindset throughout the comeback, and then Jarrett himself had to do the same, offering the opposite perspective. But in the end, the 32-year-old knows it was all for the greater good of his new team.
“I saw the number and thought, ‘Oh my god,’” Jarrett said. “It was a good lesson, man. For me, it was able to open wounds a little bit. At the same time, unspoke-about history repeats itself.”
Bears Have Their Own Demons to Overcome
It’s not as if the Chicago Bears are a team that doesn’t have its own demons to overcome, and we don’t even need to go back to the days of the Double Doink, the Caleb Hanie Game or anything that predates the 21st century. Look no further than last year, and you’ll find a team whose season was fractured by one single play.
To be frank, “Crushing Loss” is an emphatic understatement.
In this moment, Matt Eberflus’ tenure as Bears head coach effectively ended. The Bears went from a 4-2 team with some postseason promise to a 4-3 team that was on the fast track to 5-12. Caleb Williams had been defeated (and outshined) by Jayden Daniels, and Tyrique Stevenson became a punchline for 72 hours. And for the rest of the year — until an unexpected win at Lambeau Field in Week 18 — the Bears were snakebit, losing in every conceivable way.
This is a big part of the reason why all offseason, Ben Johnson has been working to make sure his team is a more resilient group than they proved to be in 2024. It’s been a conscious effort from the top of the organization.
“Ben’s spent a lot of time on resilience and how to overcome things,” Bears general manager Ryan Poles said. “He’s just done a really good job with that type of messaging … The proof of concept is like the guys are believing in it more and more every single day. They believed in it a lot when he first came, but now they really see it and feel it.”
Seeing it and feeling it in August is great, but when the calendar page turns to September and beyond, then we’ll begin to see just how resilient this team is.
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