Bears: Schedule Provides Challenges That Team Could Finally Stand Up Against
Justin Fields, Rookies Signal Change That Will Be Tested Again On National Stage
The NFL's charge of its upcoming 2021 season being the "biggest" ever is a semantic triumph, as truthful a statement made through mass marketing as you'll get from such a powerful and immersive American institution.
Rarely is the NFL so literal, it could afford to be with the addition of a 17th game to it's regular season. No one, outside of many of the already over-tasked working class of the league, is tripping about a professional season with less down time and another week of time given to mull over the natural high stakes of the game - a reverberation that will be felt wide through our society from each locker room that makes an effort to be the last one celebrating sometime now in mid-February and not in the first week of the second month of the year.
As actual league business creeps into more weeks of the calendar as we know it, events like the release of the upcoming season schedule rise in importance with each passing year. Here in the year 2021 elaborate viral videos and detailed marketing imagery punctuate the immediate information provided by the dates and matches that will form the road map to our nation’s most shared obsession from mid-August til the depths of the following winter, long past the point when Bears are to normally begin hibernation.
To stave off the natural inclinations of the football species of Ursidae mammal some unique conquering will have to be done with a schedule that early observers line up as one of the tougher slates in the NFL.
It will likely take some sort of evolution from the Bears over the next several months for them to conquer anything by the end of this schedule. New leadership has to emerge, starting with the people’s new chosen idol, the “QB1” to come. But it can’t stop with Justin Fields. The rookie class Fields leads has descended onto Halas Hall; veterans’ numbers are transforming, maybe the likes of Eddie Jackson and Javon Wims can find better mojo with numbers closer to their hearts.
Just as Jackson looks to tap back into his precious time as a Crimson Tide star with his number change, the Bears are in a unique position to look back and look forward at once. Still a mom-and-pop franchise, the Bears have for so long gotten by on its position as an NFL “charter franchise,” a constant TV draw with fan encampments across the 50 states and with consistent match-ups, like with the Packers, that ensure prime-time exposure every year.
With five games that will be alone on the national stage and a couple more that could be shown in front of most of the country, the Bears are looking again like a team that will play a crucial role in the chugging of the NFL’s hype train and not just cannon fodder for the league’s real contenders.
Looking at this schedule, the Bears will take shots but with an emerging Superman under center — a man of tomorrow seemingly equal to the multi-faceted QBs that power so many other winners across the league — along with an impressive menace to anchor the offensive line and a couple speedsters to deepen the offensive skill positions, this team could put their hands on their hips and deflect those shots with exposed chests.
Kyle Means is Editorial Director for WARR Media