It was with a tinge of sadness that I read Charlie Cooke’s lament for the Jacksonville Jaguars, a fine team featuring what seems to be an authentic stoner at quarterback. (Trevor Lawrence looks like he could moonlight as the bassist in a jam band.) Charlie’s story of falling in love with the Jags — as a newly arrived immigrant from Connecticut, no less — and having his heart broken by a shocking loss resonates deeply within my sporting heart; in fact, I well remember once joining his podcast to discuss my own in-person nightmare experience with this variety of soul-flensing disaster.
But it was with great amusement and no small amount of shameful joy that I read my colleague — and now bitter northern rival — Luther Ray Abel’s own impassioned shareholder plea to the Green Bay Packers to immediately fire coach Matt LaFleur. Why? Because I am now officially a Chicago Bears fan, and I’m sorry, but the fourth quarter of Saturday’s playoff game — where the Bears scored 25 points to overtake the overconfident Packers — was objectively a victory, not just for the Windy City but really for all mankind.
And I get to write this way, with such insufferable smugness, because I have now fully accepted that I am having the greatest “bandwagon” season of my life. Understand: I have never really considered myself a fan of the Bears, or of any other Chicago-area team, despite the fact that I’ve lived here for the better part of two decades. As a born-and-raised Beltway whelp who only later became a Chicagoan, I have retained my essential D.C./Maryland sports DNA. (The Cubs won the World Series in 2016, and I was maybe the one person in the city who didn’t much care.)
Yet the Bears have caught me at the right time. Longtime readers are probably nodding right now, for they have already seen me take every possible shot at my worthless ex-wife of a franchise, the Washington Commanders (née Football Team, née Redskins). I grew up with the Skins — through two Super Bowls, mind you — but learned to hate them passionately during the Dan Snyder era. (Trust me: You had to be there.) The psychological divorce was finalized long before the team changed its name; maybe it was around the time it became public knowledge that Snyder was forcing Redskins cheerleaders to engage in pornographic photo shoots against their will.
I never filled that football-related hole in my life with anything else. Why bother getting burned again, after all? The Bears were my only realistic choice, and ever since their 2006 Super Bowl appearance they had been consistently mediocre, in the most uninteresting way possible — neither good enough to secure anything save the rare playoff appearance, nor memorably bad enough to really create a great Jets/Browns-style disaster narrative. (I love sports narratives, and disaster narratives more than most.)
But I love miracle narratives most of all, and that’s really the only way to describe the Bears’ 2025–2026 season, which has featured one ridiculously improbable fourth-quarter comeback victory after another. (This chart lists six; I count more myself.) In theory, the Bears are a flawed team that will hit a wall next week. But then again, in theory the Bears shouldn’t even be here in the first place; they simply keep insisting on winning games they have no business still being in. No matter how improbably deep into the hole this team fell week after week, they would claw their way back by the end, and usually ahead by the final whistle.
I’ve watched them all season long, and I still don’t know how or why they suddenly click under pressure: Caleb Williams starts running for his own first downs, or launching ICBM tosses that connect with DJ Moore at the 5-yard line. The defense forces turnovers as if employing Jedi mind tricks. (Across the line of scrimmage, Jaylon Johnson discreetly waves his finger and incants, “Your hands feel slippery, you want to fumble in the backfield.”) I don’t know how they do it, but all I can say is that if you find yourself leading the Chicago Bears by 10 with five minutes left on clock, beware: Now they’ve got you right where they want you.
It feels great to be a fan of relevant football again, and I make no apologies for the fact that it took me over 20 years from the moment I first moved to Chicago to finally hop on the bandwagon. I don’t give away my heart easily, after all.