The Bears were coming off a 47-point game — their highest total since 2018 — a week before in Cincinnati.
They had piled up 576 yards — their high since 1980, if you can believe it — against a criminally inept Bengals defense.
They had done all that and come within a whisker of losing anyway because nothing in Beardom ever can be easy.
And so in came the luckless, impotent Giants to Soldier Field on Sunday, and there really was only one script for the Bears to follow. First, forget how to play offense. Next, make a two-win opponent’s rookie quarterback feel like an All-Pro. Fall behind by 10 points in the third quarter and again in the fourth. Aggravate the fans, some of whom will leave early. Make the skies look even grayer than they already were.
And, finally, the climax of it all? Somehow walk off into the frigid night without having lost.
There’s no such thing as seeing the same Bears team two weeks in a row. Good follows bad and vice versa. But they do have a knack for still being in the fight at the end, give them that much. And whether requiring two late touchdown drives to survive 24-20 against a last-place foe is a good thing or a bad thing — maybe it’s both? — the Bears are 6-3, and there’s no dismissing a record like that.
Things were awful against the Giants (2-8) for most of the way, but then they weren’t. It appeared for 2½ hours to be back to the drawing board for the Bears, but then quarterback Caleb Williams took over, the defense sparked to life and postseason possibilities suddenly sounded halfway legit again. A miserable game turned so dramatically that, in the end, it was actually pretty dang good.
What’s happening here?
‘‘These guys are finding a way to fight until the end and win the game,’’ head coach Ben Johnson said.
We saw it against the Bengals. We saw it before that against the Commanders and the Raiders. These Bears just don’t completely crumble. How’s that for damning them with faint praise? They also have beaten the Cowboys and Saints, meaning their six victories have come against the absolute furthest thing from a murderer’s row, but things could be so much worse.
Just ask beleaguered Giants head coach Brian Daboll, who’s hanging on by a thread. Or Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart, who got knocked out of the game on a second-half scramble that ended with a lost fumble and swung the momentum. Or backup quarterback Russell Wilson, who must wonder how much reason there even is, aside from the dollars coming in, to keep at it. Or fans of this team that seemingly has at least a reasonable amount of talent yet in no way, shape or form can get out of its own, bumbling way in the fourth quarters of games.
We know what it’s like for a Bears team to fit that description, don’t we? Goodness, all too well.
Dart outperformed Williams much of the way — not a good look — but only Williams remained in the throes of competition all the way through. Come to think of it, hasn’t he always since coming to the Bears? If he weren’t out there, he would have no chance to rediscover his aim and morph into the best runner on the field all at once.
It’s not how you start but rather how you finish, they all say.
‘‘We knew it was going to be a full, 60-minute game,’’ Williams said, ‘‘and that’s what it took.’’
The Giants ran around in special ‘‘Vintage White’’ uniforms, an homage to their 1986 team that won the franchise’s first Super Bowl. The duds looked familiar — in a great way. They’re what steely veteran quarterback Phil Simms wore, what All-Pro offensive stars Joe Morris and Mark Bavaro wore, what inimitable sack machine Lawrence Taylor — the 1986 NFL MVP — wore. Am I the only one now picturing Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells in an ill-fitting Giants sweater?
It was hard, as well, not to drift back to the playoffs after the 1985 season, when the Bears were en route to their only Super Bowl championship. If you watched Giants-Bears in the divisional round that season, it’s still with you. In a clash of the NFL’s best, most star-studded defenses, the Bears tore the Giants apart, sacking Simms six times and shutting them out 21-0. The brutal weather that day made the wet, chilly conditions Sunday look like child’s play.
And remember the name Sean Landeta? The Giants’ punter swung his leg and missed the ball — really missed it — that day, allowing the Bears’ Shaun Gayle to scoop it up and rumble five little yards into the end zone, one of those plays that made a Bears title feel inevitable. Forty years later, the Giants’ Jamie Gillan badly shanked a punt in the fourth quarter to help the Bears win. Some things can’t be made up.
After the victory, Johnson noted to his players that they had played imperfectly and fallen behind once again.
Then he said, ‘‘You had ’em right where you wanted ’em!’’
Maybe he was right.
